
CAROLYN SHERWIN BAILEY 


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“Alwin stuck the torch in the top of the post.” 


Page 7 








THE TORCH 
OF COURAGE 

AND OTHER STORIES 


BY 

CAROLYN SHERWIN BAILEY 

II 

Author of 

"Wonder Stories,” "Once Upon a Time Animal Stories,” 
“For the Children’s Hour,” “Stories of 
Great Adventures,” etc. 


MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY 

Springfield, Massachusetts 

1921 







Copyright, 1921, by 
MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY 
Springfield, Mass. 


Bradley Quality Boobs 

* rChUdr<m MAR 29 1921 


S>CI,A614102 


CONTENTS 



PAOB 

The Torch of Courage. 1 

The Wonderful Juggler.14 

The Burning Stars.26 

The Magic Loom .36 

Long Horn's Christmas Trail.47 

The Roots of the Kingdom.58 

How the Watches Changed Faces ... 68 

In the Forest Kingdom. 78 

Stout-Heart and the Dragon.90 

The Dwarf Named Luck.101 


iii 












/ 





THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


Alwin kneeled down on the cold stone floor 
and blew the fire. It was ©f no use; it would 
not burn, for there was little left of it save a 
few gray, dull embers and the bed of ashes. 
He looked at the couch in the corner of the 
room where his mother lay, covered with 
some of the skins that his father had brought 
home in the days when he was the mightiest 
hunter of the whole country round. There 
was nothing left of all that glory now save 
these skins and the pluck to overcome hard¬ 
ships left in the boy, Alwin. His mother 
shivered and tossed, for she was ailing. She 
shook with the cold. 

“This fire must burn,” Alwin said, throw¬ 
ing open the door, slipping through, and 
then closing it behind him. He drew back 
a moment in the icy breath of the gale that 
touched him as soon as he faced the forest. 
The trees tinkled as their icicles clashed to- 


2 THE TORCH OP COURAGE 


gether but did not break, for they were as 
hard as crystal. Alwin’s cloak was laid over 
his mother, for it was made of the toughest 
skins of all. He lost his breath for a mo¬ 
ment as he plunged into the path that led 
through the woods. It was a bitter night for 
an old woodsman to be out and Alwin was a 
lad of twelve. 

The path was a glare of ice. Once Alwin 
lost his foothold and plunged into a mass of 
frozen underbrush, its ice sharpened edges 
cutting his hands and his face. He was up 
and on again in an instant, ready for the 
next buffet. He had not long to wait. A 
sudden squall of frozen snow and sleet met 
him, the wind blowing the tiny, cutting ice 
balls in his face. 

“I shall have to go back,” Alwin thought, 
and then he caught a gleam in the dark, the 
two shining eyes of some little wild animal, 
caught as he was in the fury of the storm, 
but hiding bravely under the roots of a tree 
until the worst of it should be over and it 
could be out and on again. And the soft, 
brave note of a snow bird, nestless, the vie- 






THE TOECH OF COUEAGE 3 


tim of the storm, but bravely sounding its 
courage even now, in the night time, met the 
boy’s ears. 

“Keep on! Don’t give up!” the animal 
and the bird seemed to be warning Alwin. 
Even the cutting lash of the wind, singing a 
death song as it struck and stunned him, put 
the power to fight into Alwin. 

‘‘On, on, if you would escape me!” was the 
call of the storm. 

Alwin went on, dazed, shaking through the 
mile of the path to the next hut in the forest. 
Scarcely able to knock, he threw himself 
against the door. 

‘ ‘ A light for our fire. It is almost out, and 
my mother needs its warmth or she will die! ” 
Alwin told the man who opened the door and 
let him in to a room whose heat made him 
suddenly weak and faint. 

The man led him to a seat in the chimney 
corner. “You can never make your way 
home with a torch through this storm,” he 
said. “I will light you a large one of my 
hardest pitch, but you are in no condition to 
make the trip back before it burns out.” 



4 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


“Oh, if you will but let me try!” Alwin 
cried, getting up and going over to the win¬ 
dow. “Even now the wind is dying down,” 
he said. “Only light me the pitch and I will 
get it home.” 

There was a pot of broth over the fire, and 
the wife of the house gave Alwin a steaming 
bowl of it. Then the torch was lighted, and 
Alwin took it carefully in his hand. There 
was but a spark ablaze on its end, for it 
would not do to waste its fire on the way. 
It must be carried with the utmost care, not 
so quickly as to burn it out, or so slowly that 
it would die. Holding it as close as he dared 
to his heart, Alwin started out. 

The storm was less now, but the cold was 
clear and still. It made the lad sleepy. When 
he came to the spot where he had heard the 
call of the snow bird, its note seemed far 
away and dreamy to him, although it was 
really close at hand and loud. 

“I will sit down on this soft bank of snow 
and rest me for a space. I will go to sleep,” 
Alwin thought, between waking and the long 
sleep of the cold. His eyes half shut, he 






THE TORCH OP COURAGE 5 


stumbled toward the bank, but all at once he 
was wide awake again. The spark on the 
end of the torclf shone full in his eyes and 
burned the light of courage into his heart. 
Every muscle tense and his head up, the lad 
struggled on. Almost before he knew it, with 
the torch blazing bravely, he was at home. 

“A light for our poor little fire, mother /’ 
he said, “if only these old embers were fresh 
logs and the ashes pine knots, what a blaze 
we would have!” 

“My brave lad,” his mother cried, raising 
herself to look at Alwin as he bent over the 
fire. 

It was indeed a hopeless looking heap of 
ashes, only some charred ends left of the 
logs. But as the torch touched it, the ashes 
in a magical way turned to live coals and 
the embers to blazing logs. The heat from 
them touched the boy and his mother with a 
kind of comfort that was like food and drink 
and prosperity. And the light from the fire 
filled the room like a glory from heaven, so 
soft and radiant was it, and different from 
anything that they had ever seen before. 




6 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


They could not speak, feeling and seeing 
the wonder. 

Alwin’s mother rose, and sat beside him on 
the bench in the corner. 6 i I feel well , J1 she 
said. “In the morning I shall be up and at 
my lace making again. We will not dread 
the winter any more, my lad. No matter 
what comes, I feel as if we would be able to 
meet it.” 

“Yes,” the boy answered, but his eyes 
were looking far away. “It was a strange 
torch,” he said; “I doubt if any other would 
have kept lighted on such a night as this, and 
I wonder how I was able to get home through 
the cold.” 

The fire was still burning in the morning 
although there was very little wood on the 
pile back of the hut, and it must needs be 
hoarded for the rest of the winter. The house 
was still comfortable, the broth pot, put on 
scant full, bubbled until it was ready to 
spill, brimming with broth richer than that 
which had been put in. That night Alwin 
stuck a bit of pitch in the great fire that still 
burned on their hearth. “The beacon light 





THE TORCH OF COURAGE 7 


on the hill is gone out,” he said. “They say 
in the village that the robbers down in the 
glen have put it out so that they can he free 
to pillage and kill. And there is not a bit of 
light along our road. I am going to fasten 
this torch to the stone post at the cross roads. 
It will only last a few hours, perhaps. 
Still, it may show some wayfarer the road.” 

As Alwin stuck the torch into the crack 
near the top of the post he suddenly saw a 
second wonder. Although the wind was in 
the wrong direction for keeping it alight, the 
torch flamed and flared until it was a light 
for the road as far up and down as the boy 
could see. Neither did the flame of the torch 
burn out. The pitch seemed to increase. It 
made a beacon there by the poorest little hut 
of the whole country side. 

That night Alwin and his mother heard a 
sound of trampling feet, of rough shouting 
and cursing, of wild talk, and the dragging 
and clinking of money bags over the brush 
and the crust of the road. “The robber 
band!” Alwin cried. “They will see our 
house in the light of the torch and perhaps 




8 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


burn it, for they spare neither the rich nor 
the poor. But do you lie still, mother, and 
have not a single fear. Father’s sword 
hangs above the hearth and I will die fight¬ 
ing for you if I need to.” 

But no sooner had these brave words been 
spoken than the road was once more quiet. 
The only sounds were the harp strings of 
the forest as the wind played on the thin 
branches of the trees, and the clear trumpet 
call of the same wind on the hill top. 

“I wonder what has happened,” Alwin 
said. But when the morning sun streamed in 
the window, he saw. The torch that he had 
placed at the cross roads was gone. When 
he went out to look for its ashes, he was not 
able to find a trace of one. The snow around 
the post where it had flamed was as white as 
when it had fallen. A peasant, passing by, 
spoke to Alwin. 

“Have you heard the doings of last night, 
lad?” the peasant asked, and as the boy 
looked puzzled, he explained. “The robbers 
started out from the glen,” he told Alwin, 
“and stole and killed and burned at every 




THE TORCH OF COURAGE 9 


house they passed until they came to these 
crossing roads. At this point they suddenly 
stopped for a conference with their chief and 
then went on quietly toward the village. At 
their head rode the chief, carrying a blazing 
torch high above his head, and they stopped 
at the most humble of our huts leaving 
money for our poor. It is said that they left 
the village as poor as any of us were before 
they helped us, and that they have a plan to 
plough and plant the glen when spring comes 
and live at peace with all. ” 

“And the torch?” Alwin asked, his eyes 
full of wonder, “what became of that blaz¬ 
ing torch?” 

“How can I tell you that?” the peasant 
asked in turn. “There may have been no 
torch. It may have been only a fancy in the 
minds of those who saw the robber hand. 
The truth of the matter is that they saw the 
right instead of the wrong, and have decided 
to choose honesty instead of crime.” 

Still, the torch was gone. Alwin wondered 
if the wind had perhaps blown away all the 
ashes. At last he decided that this was the 







10 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


case. But day after day the fire that the 
torch had lighted in their home burned mer¬ 
rily and warmly. Only one or two sticks a 
day kept them warm, and seemed also to 
keep the broth pot boiling full instead of 
empty. 

So the winter went on in peace and com¬ 
fort until, like a sudden storm, war broke out 
in that country. It was a little republic, set 
in the midst of stronger ones, greater in size 
and people. But not one had its green hills 
for pasturage or its rich orchards and grain 
land. In a day it was invaded for conquest. 
Unprepared, its villages were turned into 
training camps and its fields into battle 
grounds. It was a cruel invasion, taking a 
harmless, well meaning peasantry unawares, 
and the tide of it was, from the first, against 
the men of Alwin’s country. 

Alwin’s mother spent her days rolling 
bandages, and the lad was always on the edge 
of the fighting carrying water in skins to the 
warriors no matter how thick the arrows 
were flying about him. All the village was 
doing its best, in the way it could best serve, 




THE TORCH OF COURAGE 11 


tending the wounded, burying the dead, and 
hoping always for a victory that seemed im¬ 
possible. 

The village was close to the border and the 
fighting soon centered there. Many times a 
day Alwin risked his life succoring his men, 
and so did the other boys. And all the time 
the home army was weakening and the army 
of the invasion growing in strength. 

“There is the captain of our village,” one 
of the boys said to Alwin one day when there 
were so many wounded for them to tend on 
the field that they could not quench the thirst 
of half. ‘ ‘ They say that he can not hold out 
until another day, so great are the odds 
against him. If our village falls, the cause is 
lost. The enemy will pour in across the bor¬ 
der like wolves.” 

Alwin tried to look where the boy pointed, 
but the air was thick with arrows. It was 
nearing evening and the light was dim. But 
suddenly Alwin saw something that made 
him gasp and clutch the arm of his friend. 
“Look,” he cried. “Look yonder at what 
the captain holds so high!” 




12 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


“A flaming torch!” the boy cried. “I 
never saw one so bright, or so glorious.” 

“The men are rallying and following it, 
although they are outnumbered,” Alwin ex¬ 
claimed. “See, it streams out behind the 
captain like a banner of light, and they come 
as close to it as they can, almost touching it. 
We conquer!” he shouted at last, for the 
enemy was retreating, blinded by the flash¬ 
ing light of the torch. 

Still, talking over their warm fires in the 
winter, the peasants tell the tale of the torch. 
How it magically reached the captain and 
won the victory, how it took the blindness 
from the eyes of a robber band, and could be 
seen in the sky, a trail of glory on a cold, 
frosty night, is the story they delight in of 
the Torch of Courage. 

“Where did it come from?” they ask 
themselves, and then they shake their heads. 
But the magic torch was lighted very close 
to their hearth stones. Its spark was started 
by a boy in the storm and cold of the night 
of his great courage. So is many a torch of 




THE TORCH OF COURAGE 13 


courage touched with fire, and started on 
its glorious way, blazing more and more 
brightly as it reaches from hand to hand 
until it finds a place among the stars. 




THE WONDERFUL JUGGLER 


Micah came home from the fairy ring, his 
eyes as large as blue buttons with his sur¬ 
prise. He took his little sister, Nanette, into 
the comer by the chimney to tell her. 

“At our fairy ring in the wood, you know 
the spot, Nanette, where there are so many 
toadstools, and a carpet of moss, and the 
branches of trees hanging low to make a cur¬ 
tain, I have just seen a wonder. I saw a 
stranger there, different from any boy in our 
village. He was dressed like a harlequin in 
a suit of bright colors, one leg striped with 
yellow, the other with green, and a jerkin of 
checkered stuff. His cap had bells tinkling 
on the peak, and in his hands he had a cup 
and balls.’’ 

“Was there a traveling caravan with fid¬ 
dlers and singers going through the forest*?” 
Nanette asked. 

“Not a wheel mark or a note of music any- 

14 


THE TORCH OF COURAGE 15 


where about,’’ Micah answered. 44 The boy 
was alone. He was playing by himself, 
hardly seeming to know that I was sitting at 
the foot of a tree weaving a basket. He was 
as light on his feet as a fawn, skipping here 
and there. Ah, but it was his juggling that 
caught my eyes. He could toss up more balls 
than I could count, dun colored ones that he 
took from his pockets, and each turned to a 
color like the bright tints we see in a soap 
bubble, rose, green, gold, violet. There they 
were, like a rainbow in the air, and he never 
failed to catch them in his cup and then send 
them flying up again.” 

“Nanette’s forehead wrinkled. “Had 
you been napping, Micah?” she asked. 

“I can’t say as to that,” the boy replied. 
“It was a long trip for the reeds and osiers 
and I was tired. I tried to weave my day’s 
work of baskets out there in the magic circle 
of the fairy ring. Perhaps I fell asleep. ” 

“That is just what happened,” Nanette 
said. ‘ ‘ There are roasted potatoes and fresh 
porridge for supper. Let us eat, Micah, and 
then we can work on the baskets until bed 




16 THE TORCH OP COURAGE 


time, for tomorrow we must take them to 
market.’ ’ 

But when the two children lay down on the 
straw that made their beds, and even the old 
grandfather and grandmother of the house 
were asleep and snoring, Micah saw in his 
dreams a dazzle of colored balls flying in and 
out of a juggler’s cup, and a laughing boy, 
poised on his toes as he caught them. 

“May we go to market through the 
woods'?” Nanette asked their mother in the 
morning as they stood at the garden gate, 
Micah with such a load of baskets on his back 
that they almost covered him and she with 
her arms full. 

“Indeed, yes,” their mother said. “You 
have earned a little holiday. There are no 
two children in all the valley so industrious 
and helpful as mine, I know. Go by the 
wood path, and get as good a price as you can 
for your work, for it will be winter soon 
enough and we will need flour and fuel.” 

In spite of their burdens Micah and Nan¬ 
ette almost ran to the fairy ring. “We will 
stop a moment,” Micah said. “If we can 




THE TORCH OF COURAGE . 17 


find footprints, then I shall know that I was 
not dreaming. ’’ So they set down the baskets 
for a little space and looked the ground over 
with the greatest care. There were only the 
marks left by the tiny feet of the wood mice 
and the chipmunks. It was what they had 
expected, although they had hoped. There 
was nothing to do but go on to the busy 
market place in the village. 

Who could resist buying such pretty, well 
made baskets as Micah’s and Nanette’s; 
green and brown ones for eggs, for fruit, for 
a housewife’s knitting, and some basket 
cages in which a linnet could live and be 
happy, singing outside some cottage door. 
By afternoon they were all sold and Micah 
had the precious coins tied fast in a hand¬ 
kerchief and tucked safely away in his 
breeches pocket. Then the two looked at the 
stalls of sweets and the corner of the market 
where the toy maker displayed his wares. 
Carved wooden animals, dolls in gay peasant 
dress, balls, and games were there. “If we 
could spend only a penny for ourselves, a 




18 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


ball or a cake,” Nanette said. But Micah 
shook his head. 

“The money must go home with us with¬ 
out a penny less,” he said. 

“Yes, I know,” Nanette sighed as the two 
took their way toward the forest again. 

It was late in the afternoon and the sun 
shining down through the branches of the 
trees made a kind of gold rug, marked like 
lace, on the fairy ring. It was a pretty place 
at which to stop for a moment and play. Mi- 
cah picked up a fat puff ball from the 
ground and tossed it to Nanette. She laughed 
with glee as she caught it and tossed it back. 
“Higher and swifter,” she cried. “It is as 
good as any ball the toy man had, and I can 
catch as well as a boy.” 

Then, suddenly, she stopped. Micah, too, 
was dumb. There, so n$ar that they could 
almost touch his gay jerkin, the bells on his 
cap jingling a merry little tune, and the 
points of his shoes hardly touching the 
ground, was the juggler. He raised his cup 
and took the puff ball from Micah’s hand. 
Up, up it went with the shower of rainbow 




THE TORCH OE COURAGE 19 


colored spheres that came from nowhere and 
flew up and down as the juggler tossed and 
caught them. But Micah’s ball was the 
most beautiful of all. As it flew, it caught 
the color of the sun until it was pure gold. 
Then, as it fell, the stranger took it out of 
his cup and gave it to Micah. It was pure 
gold. 

“Thank you,” Micah and Nanette gasped, 
but there was no one to hear them. As sud¬ 
denly as he had appeared the wonderful 
juggler was gone and all that remained was 
the ball of gold that would make the home 
of the basket children comfortable for long. 

It could not be helped that news of the 
wonder spread through the village. The 
children and the grown folks flocked in 
crowds to the fairy ring, but it was only the 
children who saw the juggler, and not all of 
them. One day Micah and Nanette took 
Crispin, who had so many toys that he could 
not play with them, yet would not share 
them, to the fairy ring. Crispin had begged 
so hard to be taken, and had showed them 
his ball of clear crystal. “I want to see if 




20 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


your magic juggler can do anything to this 
ball,” Crispin said. “My father brought it 
home from a voyage, and I can see through 
it as far as the top of the hill. But I should 
like a ball of some thick, rich metal instead. 
Perhaps if I offered to pay this mountebank 
he will change it for me.” 

Nanette shook her head. She feared that 
this was a poor hope, but all the children felt 
sorry for Crispin. His toys brought him so 
little pleasure. If he could, by a wonder, 
see the juggler in the wood, it was worth 
trying. The three sat down under the trees 
and Micah whistled a merry tune to cheer 
Crispin. Crispin was not able to whistle, 
and as for laughing, he did not seem to know 
how. 

Then, when they were least expecting him, 
out from behind a hazel bush leaped the jug¬ 
gler. Never had he danced so fast or leaped 
so high, or kept so many glowing balls flying 
right and left, high and low, but never once 
dropping. And there, in their midst, was 
Crispin’s ball, as white as a diamond. Its 
light almost dazzled the children. It seemed 




THE TORCH OP COURAGE 21 


to increase in size until it was as large as a 
gazing ball, and suddenly it was back in Cris¬ 
pin’s band once more, the same size, the same 
clear crystal. 

Crispin held it up and looked through it. 
Suddenly he laughed. 

“Look,” he cried. “It is a holiday and 
there is a company of boys and girls in my 
garden. They are playing with my games 
and we are all having a fine time. ’ ’ He looked 
again, and he began to whistle as clear and 
high as Micah could. “The hill is full of 
little creatures calling me to come up to them 
and have a good time,” he said, “the birds, 
the hares, the squirrels, and the conies. I 
never saw how pleasant a hill it is before. 
Look through my crystal if you like.” So 
Micah and Nanette looked through it in turn, 
but they did not tell Crispin that they could 
see nothing but the fairy ring. The vision 
of happiness for Crispin had come to him 
from the juggler’s cup, but it was so large 
that it was enough for all the neighbors. No 
matter how downhearted the children were, 
Crispin was able to see happiness after that 



22 THE TORCH OP COURAGE 


in his crystal ball for them, and tell them 
how to find it. 

There was Peg, the child of the charcoal 
maker, who also saw a wonder in the fairy 
ring. Grimy, merry, ragged little Peg, who 
had longed to have a glimpse of the juggler 
but who kept house for her father, and car¬ 
ried baskets of the black charcoal he burned 
to the Tillage doors. No one saw Peg creep 
into the forest one day when her work was 
done, a wood ball her father had carved for 
her hidden in her apron. But many of the 
villagers saw Peg come out. 

She could scarcely tell them what had hap¬ 
pened, but the children knew. Peg held a 
wondrous great ball of colors close to her 
heart. It was as thin as a balloon, but it 
would never burst. It was so large that, 
holding its string, Peg could fly a little way 
up in the air with it, away from the dirt and 
grime of the charcoal fires. And its colors 
touched her hair with gold and her cheeks 
with rose and her dress with shining blue. 
Ah, the juggler had given Peg one of the 
most beautiful balls of all! 




THE TORCH OP COURAGE 23 


The summer went on and soon it would he 
time for the leaves to fall. “The juggler of 
the wood must be given a lodging place for 
the winter,” the people of the village said to 
each other. He had made the ailing children 
well and the frowning ones into children of 
joy. He could turn a lead ball into a living, 
gleaming one of sapphire. That was the 
strangest wonder of all, Fabian’s lead 
marble, changed to sapphire when he 
thought that he had lost it through freeing a 
timid rabbit from a snare. 

“The old castle on the hill shall be made 
over for this juggler,” the villagers said. 
“It shall be refurnished and we will carry 
him the best of food and we will send 
musicians to play to him.” 

So the whole village went one day in the 
late summer to the borders of the wood, and 
they crowded as close as they could to the 
fairy ring, putting the children in front. 
“Surely he will come out and toss his balls 
for our boys and girls,” they said, “and then 
we can extend him an invitation to spend the 
winter in our village.” 




24 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


The juggler came. The children who are 
grandfathers and grandmothers now can tell 
the story of his coming, like a dancing flame, 
or a flash of jewels spilled on a table of jade, 
or a falling star breaking into many colors. 
Then the juggler took form, leaping about on 
his carpet of moss and throwing his balls so 
close to the children’s faces that they were 
almost blinded by the colors. But not one 
ball did the juggler drop. Then, as they too 
were dancing with the joy of watching him, 
the juggler, all at once, stood still. He put 
his fingers on his lips as if to tell them to 
always keep his secret, and then he put his 
cup in his pocket and stole softly away be¬ 
hind the trees. 

“I saw only the wings of a flying scarlet 
tanager,” one of the villagers said. 

“I saw nothing but the first red leaf of the 
autumn floating down to the ground,” an¬ 
other said. 

“I heard the footfalls of a deer, running 
away through the forest,” a third said. 
“What a pity that we shall not have the jug¬ 
gler with us all winter. ” 




THE TORCH OF COURAGE 25 


But the wonderful juggler was there. Had 
not the children learned his art of tossing 
dull things in the light of a. fairy ring and 
having them return changed and precious? 
They, too, could juggle now and if ever they 
felt like being discouraged or sad, presto, 
could they not fancy that they heard his 
bells, or caught a glimpse of his checkered 
jerkin and pointed shoes ? 




THE BURNING STARS 


“I hear the footsteps of the horses. Oh, 
mother, I can scarcely wait to go! As he 
spoke, Gilbert, the forester’s son, ran out to 
the edge of the road and looked up toward 
the brow of the hill where the old fortress 
stood, and down which the guard would soon 
ride. The boundary of the kingdom was 
threatened by invasion, and the forces of the 
crown had rallied to meet the enemy. Even 
the youths, as young as Gilbert’s thirteen 
years, were going to help carry armor and 
shields. 

“My blanket and water bottle and the bow 
and arrows are ready,” the lad went on, 
“and you said that I might carry the banner 
that has hung over the fireplace so long. 
Good-bye, mother; I shall come back to you 
safely when this war is over.” As the dust 
from the horses began to fill the road, and 

the sound of the ringing hoofs came nearer, 
26 


THE TORCH OE COURAGE 27 


Gilbert ran a little way up the road to meet 
the cavalcade. It was indeed a brave sight, 
the general in his plumes and long crimson 
cloak, riding first, and just behind him the 
standard bearer with a banner inscribed 
with the same bands and stars that marked 
Gilbert’s own. 

It was said that sometime those stars 
would burn on the banner of the kingdom 
with the fire of the real stars, but everyone 
knew this to be but a tale of the soothsayers. 

Gilbert could see his father among the 
brown clad ranks of the foresters, near the 
end of the line. 

“Here I am, all ready to go with you to 
battle,” Gilbert cried, but his father wheeled 
a bit out of the line and took the lad gently 
by his hand. 

“My gallant little Gilbert,” he said, “how 
could I leave the mother, and Bettina, and 
the house on the edge of the forest if I did 
not know that you were there to take my 
place % No, son, hang up your war tools and 
get out your axe, for there is work to do 
among my trees.” That was all that the 




28 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


forester had time to say. The cavalcade 
swung along, the trumpets sounded, and 
then were stilled in the distance as the army 
was lost to sight in the hollows of the hills. 
Gilbert watched until he could see no more 
of it. Then he turned sorrowfully toward 
the small thatched hut which needed him 
more than did the king’s guard. 

They were glad to see him, though, were 
his mother and Bettina. 

“Now I shall have the bucket of water 
from the spring that I need, and some fresh 
chips to start the fire,” his mother said; 
“there never was such a good water carrier 
and fire tender as our Gilbert. ” 

Gilbert hesitated for a moment. He was 
of a mind to kick the water bucket and run 
away from the axe. What w T ork was this, he 
asked himself, for a boy who might have 
been marching beside the king’s guard, sing¬ 
ing a battle song with the rest. Then an odd 
thought popped into his mind, as if to com¬ 
fort him. 

“Here goes the water carrier of the king,” 
he shouted as he grasped the handle of the 




THE TORCH OF COURAGE 29 


bucket, and started at full speed for the 
spring. He filled it brimming full and did 
not mind a bit its weight on his back, think¬ 
ing instead that he was going from one to 
another of the soldiers behind the lines, giv¬ 
ing them cups of water. It was a good play, 
and as Gilbert’s axe rang out in the brush, 
he said to himself, 

“Wood and chips for the camp fires of 
our men!” 

Still, in spite of all this fun, the days 
were long and quiet there at home. Most of 
the men and the older boys were gone from 
the village, and there was much extra work 
to be done, and scant time for play. Some¬ 
times reinforcements would ride through 
their valley, and the road had to be kept 
clear for these fresh soldiers who were on 
their way to help the king’s guard. Gilbert 
and the smaller boys cut away the weeds and 
bushes from the edge of the road, and cleared 
the stones from it all the way to the edge of 
the forest. It made their backs ache and 
their legs were stiff by the time they came 
to the forester’s hut, but it was fun to see 




30 THE TORCH OP COURAGE 


which would spy Gilbert’s banner first. He 
kept it hung in pleasant weather from a 
tall sapling that grew just outside their door. 

“It is a gay flag, if it is old, with all its 
stars,” the boys would say, and Gilbert 
would answer with pride, “Yes, it was my 
grandfather’s banner, and his father’s be¬ 
fore that. I was going to carry it in battle, 
but I have to stay with it here at home.” 

But Gilbert found his hardest work in the 
forest. He would start out just as his father 
had in the morning, and he found that there 
was ever so much that he was able to do to 
help the old men whe were the only foresters 
left. He could hold their axes to the grind¬ 
stone, and gather chips, and tie bundles of 
fagots. When he was not busy, he talked to 
the little wild creatures that lived in the for¬ 
est and shared his lunch of black bread with 
them all, the rabbits, the wild mice, the par¬ 
tridges and the pigeons. 

It seemed as if they understood his speech, 
and certainly Gilbert could understand 
theirs. He grew able to follow the rabbit 
roads in and out of the brush until he came 






THE TORCH OP COURAGE 31 


to their burrows at the foot of the hidden 
stumps. Even the foxes let Gilbert trail 
them, for they knew that he meant them no 
harm, and the wild birds fed out of his hand. 

It had been fall when the soldiers went by, 
and now it was the spring, but wild weather 
still and stormy as the rain swelled the 
mountain torrents and turned parts of the 
forest to swamp land. Even more than in 
the fall did the old foresters need the help of 
the village boys, and Gilbert was their leader 
always, breaking paths, sharpening axes, 
and carrying hot food to and from the huts. 

One day he was separated from the wood 
choppers, he never was able to tell quite how. 
The sky grew dark with a storm, and he 
could hardly find his way in and out among 
the trees. Gilbert jumped to one side just 
in time to escape a blow from a huge dead 
limb, blown off by the wind and hurled down 
in front of him. It was very still except for 
the whistle of the gale and the crackling of 
the twigs. Suddenly Gilbert heard a soft 
sound, the faint coo of a pigeon. He looked 
up, and saw the bird caught in some way 



32 THE TOECH OF COUEAGE 


near the end of a long branch far above his 
head. 

“It needs shelter,’’ the boy thought. “I 
wonder if I can climb that tree in this 
storm.” 

Even as he spoke, there was a blinding 
flash of light, and a limb near the one where 
the pigeon clung was torn off. Gilbert 
hugged close to the side of the path, and 
when the storm abated a little he started up 
the tree. 

It was a hazardous climb, for the trunk 
was smooth and slippery from the rain. The 
branches to which he clung bent perilously, 
but the pigeon, as if she knew that he was a 
friend, never moved, and at last Gilbert was 
so close to her that he could feel the beating 
of her heart. 

“How did you happen to be caught here 
in the storm, poor little creature,” Gilbert 
asked, “and so far from home, for you look 
like one of the tame pigeons that the soldiers 
keep in the tower of our citadel and feed 
with their own hands?” 

Then, as Gilbert, holding the trembling, 




THE TORCH OF COURAGE 33 


storm soaked bird, took bis dangerous way 
down the tree again, and found his way by 
the flashes of lightning toward the edge of 
the forest, he had a strange thought. He 
touched the soft feathers that grew so thickly 
around the pigeon’s neck. 

“It is true,” he cried, “this is a carrier 
pigeon bearing a message from our guard.” 

It was quite true. When Gilbert, hims elf 
half dead from the storm and the long jour¬ 
ney out of the deep places of the woods in 
which he had lost himself, reached home, 
they untied the paper folded about the 
pigeon’s neck. 

“Send us reinforcements or we perish,” 
the message read. 

That night beacon fires burned on all the 
hills, and before daybreak the tread of 
marching feet could be heard on the road. 
All the neighboring hill towns were sending 
their last men to the help of their king. 

So it happened that the battle was won, 
and presently the forest dressed itself in 
green moss and the blue and gold of wild 




34 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


flowers for a carpet to welcome the feet of 
the conquerors. 

“What a pity it is that we are so poor 
after this winter of hardship, and are not 
able to plan a great celebration for the day 
on which our gallant soldiers come home. If 
we might only greet them with music, and 
fires all along the road, and wreaths to crown 
every one of the heroes!” the women and 
the old men said. 

It did seem a pity that the village had 
nothing but its love and a record of patience 
in hardship to give the returning army, but 
still they had received no word as to when 
the remnant of the troops would come home. 
Each day they listened for the beat of hoofs, 
and the doors were left open far into the 
night to catch the first sound of the heroes. 

It was a dark night, with no moon or stars, 
that the strange light was seen. It seemed 
to start at the small hut of the forester on 
the edge of the wood where Gilbert lived. 
Then it spread, making a path of glory 
through the forest and into the village, shin¬ 
ing with such a great brightness that it made 




THE TORCH OF COURAGE 35 


the sky glow as it did in the noonday sun. 
At the same time, the slow tramp of horses’ 
feet could he heard. Then along the path of 
light the army came home, weary, and with 
many breaks in the ranks, hut carrying it¬ 
self proudly as became the defenders of a 
dear country. 

“What a marvellous light, and there are 
no fires to be seen!” the general exclaimed. 
Then, as they came to the edge of the forest 
and the first of the huts, they saw what was 
the source of the brightness. 

An old banner, worn and faded, hung from 
a sapling outside the door. But every one 
of its stars was burning in the night with a 
glory that touched the sky and the head of 
each of the heroes. It was Gilbert’s flag, 
shining for his service and that of all the 
village, as the soothsayers had said that some 
day the banner of stars would shine. 





THE MAGIC LOOM 


Jeanne came flying into the cottage door, 
her dark eyes shining with excitement. She 
conld not speak at first; then, when her 
breath came, she told her brother, Pierre, of 
the wonder. 

“The lord of the castle has offered a great 
reward for a new piece of weaving to cover 
the floor of his throne room,’’ Jeanne ex¬ 
plained. “I saw the notice posted on the 
gate of the castle grounds. His old rug, so 
rare and of such beautiful colors, is quite 
worn out, and he wants another that will be 
just as rare and lovely to look at. Our 

loom-” But before Jeanne could say any 

more, Pierre set down the basket of vege¬ 
tables that he was cleaning to put into the 
soup pot, and motioned to the little girl to 
come out into the garden with him. As they 
reached the herb patch, well away from the 
door, Pierre spoke. 


36 


THE TORCH OF COURAGE 37 


4 4 Father was in the other room, and I was 
afraid that he would hear,” he said; 44 there 
is no weaver in all the land w T ho could make 
as beautiful a rug as he for the lord of the 
castle, but-” 

Jeanne finished sadly for Pierre, 4 4 He is 
now blind, and can not see the colors. I for¬ 
got, Pierre, that our father might hear me, 
and he would feel so badly to know that he 
can not do even a stitch toward the lord’s 
new carpet. I was thinking only of the re¬ 
ward, one hundred pieces of gold and a rich 
farm and house. We could have the great 
doctor from the city come and look at his 
closed eyes, and we could raise vegetables 
and flowers for the market, if only that re¬ 
ward were ours.” Jeanne sighed as she 
looked at the tiny hut in which they lived, 
and their too-small strip of land. 

44 1 know,” Pierre answered, 44 but, in the 
meantime, there is the day’s work to be done. 
I have not finished getting the soup pot 
ready.” 

4 4 And I have not swept the floors, or 
tended the garden,” Jeanne added, a sunny 





38 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


smile taking the place of the shadows that 
had clouded her face. 

So, all day, while the streets and lanes of 
the village were in a hubbub of excitement 
because of the posted notice on the castle 
gate, Jeanne and Pierre were busy with the 
things that had to be done at home. All the 
weavers in the neighborhood, and the dye 
makers, the spinners, and the carders neg¬ 
lected everything and began to make ready 
to earn the reward for such a carpet as the 
lord demanded. People began pouring into 
the village from far places bringing draw¬ 
ings, pots of bright colors, and skeins of 
silken thread that they offered for sale at 
fabulous prices, and the village fairly 
hummed with its new weaving. But the 
children of the blind weaver had no time to 
so much as look out of their lattice gate. 

Jeanne swept and scoured the little home 
until it fairly glittered, so clean was it, and 
Pierre led their father out to his favorite 
seat in the sunshine at the door where the 
linnet hung in its cage and sang. Then, when 
he was comfortably settled, Pierre dug and 





THE TORCH OF COURAGE 39 


weeded the patch of ground that yielded 
them potatoes, leeks, artichokes and so many 
other good things. There was the dinner to 
get and after that the soup bowls and the 
mugs to wash. In the afternoon, Jeanne 
brought out her embroidery frame and 
worked beside her father. He could hear 
the sound of the many looms in the village, 
and it made him sorrowful. So Jeanne sang 
him a merry little song that she knew, and 
he could not help laughing, for it was about 
Pantalon and Pierrette. 

Then it came night, and the first strange 
thing happened in the home of the blind 
weaver. 

Ever since the day when his sight had so 
suddenly failed him, he had kept the loom 
with its great beams and worn shuttle in a 
room with a closed door. He could not bear 
to have the door opened, so the loom was 
hung with a woof of dust and a warp of 
spiders’ webs. No sound ever came from it, 
for there was no hand in the house to weave 
the beautiful colored threads into patterns 
that rivalled the sky, the forest, and the beds 




40 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


of flowers in beauty. Jeanne and Pierre 
went on tip-toe past the closed door, for it 
had always seemed to them like the door of 
death. 

Jeanne was almost asleep, tired out after 
her day of service, when she heard a sound 
from the loom room. There was a creaking, 
as if the loom were being moved nearer 
the window through which the moonlight 
streamed. It was as if someone were setting 
up the warp of a new fabric. 

She crept out of bed and stole to the room 
where her father and Pierre slept, but 
neither of them had moved. Jeanne went 
back to bed, a little frightened, but sure that 
she must have dreamed the sound of the 
silent loom. 

There was a pageant in the village the 
next day. All the children put on their best 
smocks and carried garlands of flowers up 
to the castle of the lord. It was to show him 
how much the village was honored by his 
offer of a reward for the weaving. There 
were musicians who went with them, and a 




THE TORCH OP COURAGE 41 


feast of cakes at the castle for every boy and 
girl. 

Jeanne got out her best smock and dis¬ 
covered that it was as worn and faded as the 
one in which she worked. It really was not a 
best one at all. Pierre tried to mend the 
holes in his shoes and then gave it up. The 
two looked at each other, and at last they 
both laughed. 

“How we would look in the pageant, like 
beggar children, not the son and daughter of 
the most skilled weaver in the land,” Pierre 
said merrily. 

“We will have to be so happy here at home 
that the others will not know how badly we 
feel at not going to the castle,” Jeanne 
added. 

So that was exactly what they did. Jeanne 
spread their midday meal out under the rose 
tree, a fresh loaf of bread and a comb of 
clear honey for a treat. And at the end of 
this home feast, Pierre made a speech about 
a patriot which he had learned at school. 
Then the three played a fine game of tag. 
The children would hide while their father 




42 THE TORCH OP COURAGE 


tried to guess by their voices, calling to him, 
where they were. Before they knew it, the 
day was over, and it had been a very happy 
day. 

That night the second strange thing hap¬ 
pened in the home of the blind weaver. 

Pierre was almost asleep when he heard a 
sound from the closed room where the loom 
was kept. It was a rattling sound as if the 
long beams that held the warp of the weaving 
in the old days were straining with the 
weight of the new warp. Pierre, frightened, 
lay in bed and listened, not daring to move 
lest he waken his father. At last he got up 
and went softly to the door of his sister’s 
room and peered in. There was the little 
girl fast asleep, so Pierre decided that it 
must have been the wind he had heard and 
he went back to bed. 

The days went on, and everybody in the 
village was excited about winning the lord’s 
prize for their weaving. People stopped to 
speak about it at the gate of the blind 
weaver, and they all were sure that theirs 
would be the winning rug. 




THE TORCH OP COURAGE 43 


“Do you remember the pattern of oak 
leaves with berries lying among them that 
you made the fashion ?” one asked him. 
“Well, I am using that design, and I know 
that it will win the prize.’’ 

“And do you mind your carpet of daffo¬ 
dils with the border of violets, like the road¬ 
side in the spring?” another asked of the 
blind weaver. “That is the design which I 
am using, and it is sure to bring me favor in 
the sight of the lord of the castle.” 

When these, and many others had passed 
by, Pierre stamped his foot in anger. ‘ ‘ I can 
not stand it. I shall go to the castle and 
denounce these men as thieves. They are 
taking the honor that is yours,” he told his 
father. But the blind man only smiled, call¬ 
ing the lad to him. He passed his hands 
over Pierre’s eyes. “Now,” he said, “you 
are wearing rose colored glasses, the eyes of 
joy. Can it be, Pierre, that I am able to see 
better than you ? One must look at the suc¬ 
cess of others with joy, not jealousy. What 
matters it if they use my patterns? The 
workmanship is theirs.” 




44 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


That night the third strange thing hap¬ 
pened in the home of the blind weaver. 

He lay awake long into the night, for, no 
matter how brave he showed himself for the 
sake of the children, he still longed for a 
chance to weave once more. Suddenly, from 
the closed room where the loom was kept, he 
heard the whir of the shuttle flying in and 
out of the threads of the warp as he had used 
to throw it near the end of the pattern. He 
sat up in bed. The house was quiet, except 
for this sound. Then it stopped. “I 
dreamed it,” he thought, “but what a won¬ 
derful dream I” 

Almost before daybreak the next morn¬ 
ing there came a loud pounding at the door. 
Jeanne opened it, and there stood a mes¬ 
senger in the uniform of the castle. He 
appeared in great haste. 

“My lord demands that I search every 
house where there is a loom,” he said, “be¬ 
fore the award is made. He feels that some 
may hide their weaving in order to sell it at 
a higher price in a neighboring country.” 




THE TORCH OF COURAGE 45 


“We have no weaving, for my father is 
blind,” Jeanne said. 

“For all that, I must see the loom,” the 
messenger demanded. He pushed open the 
door of the room where the loom was kept. 
The sunrise was lighting it, and he stood, 
amazed, on the threshold. 

“Nothing but dust and cobwebs,” the 
blind weaver apologized. “I have not been 
able to use it for a long time. ” 

But what the others saw was the most 
beautiful piece of weaving that the village, 
or the countryside, for that matter, had ever 
known. The warp was all of threads of pure 
gold, and over that in colors of blue and rose 
lay a pattern of birds, and vines, and roses, 
and bits of sky and little blue flowers, all so 
perfectly blended and woven that one could 
fairly hear the birds and smell the flowers. 

“It is a magic carpet!” the messenger ex¬ 
claimed. “It will win the prize. And you 
say that the weaver is blind?” he asked in 
wonder. And they told him that this was 
true, but also that they had dreamed of hear¬ 
ing the sound of the loom at night. 




46 THE TORCH OP COURAGE 


No one was ever quite able to explain it, 
but the wise man at the castle, looking at the 
magic carpet one day, said, “It has the gold 
of service in it, the blue of happiness, and 
the rose color of joy!” 

That, perhaps, was the explanation, and 
told why the weaving had done itself, after 
the day’s work was over. The little house 
was so full of these three that they couldn’t 
stop, but wove themselves into a pattern that 
the lord of the castle prized most of all. 




LONG HORN’S CHRISTMAS TRAIL 


Long Horn, the reindeer, looked back in 
terror as he leaped from one snowy hum¬ 
mock to another. He was always afraid, this 
fleet footed, beautiful, brown eyed creature 
of the North. In the summer, when the 
leaves were thick and green on the trees of 
the forest, he never knew when an arrow 
might pierce its way through them, and into 
his heart, for there were hunters every¬ 
where in that season. In the long, bitter 
winter, when his hoof marks made a trail 
in the snow that was easy to follow, his 
danger from his enemies was even greater. 

Long Horn stopped a moment on the top 
of a white hill to rest and get fresh breath. 
It was so still that he could hear the tinkle 
of the icicles that hung, swaying in the wind, 
from the pine trees. It was so cold that the 
stars looked frosty where they glowed in the 
dark sky. Perhaps he was safe now, and he 

47 


48 THE TORCH OP COURAGE 


was very hungry, for he had been running 
without stopping ever since early morning. 

The reindeer reached his nose down 
through the snow to nibble a bit of moss. 
Suddenly he heard a low bark, the summons 
that called the Pack, and then a growl, 
and the running tramp of feet on the crust 
of the snow. Long Horn raised his head high 
up in the air to catch the scent. It came to 
him, the sure scent of the great dogs of the 
forest. He started on again, but the Pack 
was up the hill and gaining on him. The 
leader bounded ahead of the others, for the 
thought of a deer’s blood gave new speed to 
his legs. His mouth gaped open, and his 
tongue hung out. 

The reindeer could hear the footsteps of 
the wolf coming nearer to him; the scent 
grew stronger. Then, as he turned, panting, 
he saw the long, gray body of the wolf close 
to him. The moment was Long Horn’s un¬ 
doing, for the wolf caught up with him, and 
sank his fangs in one of his slender limbs, 
holding him in this bloody grip. 

The reindeer was of a mind to give up, 




THE TOECH OF COUEAGE 49 


but above the pain of bis hurt, be felt other 
tilings: tbe touch of the winds on the moun¬ 
tain crags in tbe fall, tbe cool healing of tbe 
mountain waters in tbe spring, and tbe glow 
of tbe sun in tbe summer time. He couldn’t 
give up all these, be thought, although be was 
faint from tbe agony of tbe teeth, tearing bis 
flesh. 

Tbe wolf was going to bold him, accord¬ 
ing to tbe law of tbe Pack, until tbe others 
came up to have their share of deer meat, but 
all at once Long Horn gave a mighty wrench. 
He felt bis limb crushing as be pulled it out 
of tbe grip of tbe savage wolf, but in spite 
of bis pain, tbe reindeer gave a long, brave 
leap. He reached tbe peak of tbe next bill. 
Tbe wolves would have to dip down to tbe 
hollow and then climb up again in order to 
reach him. Long Horn looked down into the 
valley that was spread like a white blanket 
in front of him. At tbe foot of tbe bill be 
saw a light from a fire. He started toward 
it, for it might mean shelter. 

At every step Long Horn’s trail was 
marked by drops of bright red blood that 





50 THE TOECH OP COUEAGE 


flowed from Ms wounded leg, but he kept on. 
It was slippery going down to the valley, 
but he kept the trail. At last, weak and faint, 
he came to the light, and then he saw that it 
shone from the forge fire of the blacksmith 
who had made runners for the sleds that 
carried food and wood through the forest. 
It was strange, though, that the forge fire 
should be burning now, and at night, for the 
blacksmith had been called to carry a sword 
instead of his hammer, and there was no 
one left in the whole valley to weld metals 
with the skill that had been his. 

Long Horn peered in through the window 
of the blacksmith’s shop, the light of wMch 
almost dazzled his eyes, and what he saw 
there was of a passing strangeness. At the 
forge stood Christopher, the little lame son 
of the blacksmith, blowing the bellows with 
all Ms might until the piece of iron that he 
had in the fire was of the temper for shap¬ 
ing on the forge. Then he carried it in the 
tongs to the forge, and began hammering it 
into shape for making a small pair of run¬ 
ners for a tiny sled that he had carved from 





THE TORCH OF COURAGE 51 


the wood of the spruce. It was a most per¬ 
fect little sled, but of the size that a gnome 
of the woods might like, for Christopher 
was making a doll’s sled. 

The shop was full of other rare and beau¬ 
tiful toys that Christopher had made with 
his knife, or had hammered into form on his 
father’s forge. There were bright steel 
skates for gliding swiftly through the 
fjords, quaint little dolls shaped from wood, 
carts with stout wheels, all the different 
kinds of beasts and birds who lived in the 
woods cut also from wood. There was a toy 
of every kind that children love there in the 
blacksmith’s shop. 

Long Horn marvelled so at the sight, and 
at the skill of the little bent craftsman, 
working there so deftly in his fur trimmed 
smock, that he bent his head to look closer, 
and his antlers tapped on the glass of the 
window. Christopher looked up in alarm, 
for he was the guardian of the shop in his 
father’s absence. Then he went bravely to 
the door, and looked out. Long Horn came 
to the door, dragging his hurt foot, and 



52 THE TORCH OE COURAGE 


rubbed bis bead against tbe lintel as a token 
and sign that be came as a friend. 

It was one of tbe marvels of those old days 
that tbe folk wbo lived on tbe edge of the 
forest, and in peace with tbe wild dwellers 
of it, were able to understand their language, 
as the animals and birds could also under¬ 
stand theirs. So Christopher reached up 
and put his arms around Long Horn’s neck, 
because he was so glad to see a friend instead 
of a foe, and in doing so he saw tears in Long 
Horn’s great, dark eyes. Then Christopher 
saw the long red trail behind the reindeer 
in the snow. 

Long Horn told the boy of the pursuit of 
the Pack, and Christopher led him to the 
bam where there were plenty of fodder and 
warm hay for a bed. He put the healing 
ointment from the balsam tree on Long 
Horn’s wounds, which had the magic quality 
of taking away the pain at once. Then, as 
the reindeer rested, Christopher told him 
about his work. 

“The village is full of sorrow,” he said. 
“You, yourself, know how it has been rav- 




THE TORCH OP COURAGE 53 


aged by the enemy, and how there are many 
children left alone, and little food, and small 
fires on these bitter nights. So I thought, 
since I am but a crippled boy, of no use as 
a soldier, or even a page, that I would like 
to do something in this cruel winter time to 
make happiness in the homes in the village 
where there are children like myself. I have 
a toy finished for each one,” he said, “but 
now I am afraid that my work must go for 
naught. The snows are very deep, and I can 
not wear snow shoes to carry the toys to the 
village.” 

Then Christopher went back to the shop, 
and Long Horn rested, but all night long he 
thought about the little toy-maker. When 
morning came, a wonderful idea had formed 
in Long Horn’s head. 

He went jfco the door of the blacksmith’s 
shop, and tapped on it with his antlers. 
When Christopher opened it, the reindeer 
spoke to him. 

“My little brother of the North,” he said, 
“I will carry your toys to the children in the 
village. I see a sleigh in the barn. Harness 



54 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


me to it, I pray you, and then I shall be able 
to pull a large and heavy load with great 
speed over the snow. In this way I can ex¬ 
press my gratitude to you for saving my life. 
I should have bled to death if it had not been 
for your kind hands, and here I am as well 
and fleet as ever.” 

A wonderful happiness shone in Christo¬ 
pher’s face, but he knew the dangers of the 
trip. 

“My brother,” he said to Long Horn, “the 
road to the village lies back along the trail 
over which you came to me last night. Are 
you not afraid of the Pack?” 

“Not I, little master,” the reindeer an¬ 
swered. “Who would harm me as I draw 
a load of toys to bring joy to the children 
who now are in sorrow? 1 ’ 

So all day long Christopher and Long 
Horn made preparations for the wonderful 
adventure. The reindeer pulled down green 
branches of June and hemlock to make the 
load beautiful, and then stood patiently in 
the harness that he was not used to as Chris¬ 
topher loaded the sleigh with toys. It was a 




THE TORCH OF COURAGE 55 


rich load, for the boy had been working 
many weeks to give this pleasure to his 
friends. His mother had helped him, so 
there were warm knitted things of wool, 
hoods and caps and mufflers, red, and green, 
and white. There were some toys too made 
of gingerbread, and baskets woven from 
greens, and wreaths made of the pine that 
trails on the ground underneath the snow 
and trimmed with the red berries that grow 
near it. There had never been such a load 
in all the country of the North, and when it 
was packed Christopher hung a string of 
bells around Long Horn’s neck to ring with 
every leap he took. 

“Good-bye, and good luck!” he shouted 
as the reindeer started, loping back along 
the trail, just as the winter sun was setting 
like a big red ball. 

“Will the Pack follow me?” Long Horn 
thought as he took his way. “They have 
probably been waiting for me ever since I 
made my escape, fiercer than ever.” 

This was true. As the reindeer struck into 
the deep woods he caught again that terrible 




56 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


scent of the wolves, and he saw one or two 
lean, gray forms skulking behind the trees. 
But the ringing of Christopher’s bells 
frightened them. They turned and ran, for 
they did not like the tune, and Long Horn 
was safe. 

He could find the way easily, because all 
along the forest a path was marked by the 
drops of the blood he had spilled. But when 
he turned back once to see how far he had 
come, he saw a marvel. For every drop of 
blood on the snow, a fair green tree had risen 
where there had been none before, and the 
trees were crowned with most beautiful red 
berries. 

Soon, Long Horn had come to the vil¬ 
lage, and as he stopped at every door, ring¬ 
ing his bells, there was a sound of laughter 
from the children such as had not been 
heard there for a long time. Each child had 
a gift before the dawning of the next day. 

The oldest person in the village remem¬ 
bered that night through all the years that 
came afterward. They said that a new, 
brighter star shone in the sky at midnight, 




THE TORCH OP COURAGE 57 


and the woodcutters brought home great 
branches of the new tree with red berries in 
the morning, and named it holly. No 
one knew what became of Long Horn, but a 
decree was issued not to kill any more deer 
in the forest, so as to protect him, and it was 
said that he came again the next winter with 
his toys, on the anniversary of that night. 

As for Christopher, it was known that he 
lost his lameness, perhaps from the good 
exercise of making the toys. However these 
strange things can be explained, one is true 
and has never failed: each year Christmas 
comes to us with gifts and holly and the 
tinkle of the reindeer’s bells for those who 
have sharp enough ears to hear it. And with 
Christmas come service for others, and joy 
for those who walk in sorrow, and new 
courage. 




THE BOOTS OF THE KINGDOM 


The night before it had been nothing but 
the bare field which lay just back of the 
gardens of the king. Then it was a morning 
in spring, blue enough, and golden enough, 
and gay enough, with the singing of the 
robins, for anything magical to happen. 
Edwin, passing by, noticed the change first, 
and he ran down to the village with the news. 

“Something wonderful happened in the 
night in the bare ground of the royal gar¬ 
dens,” Edwin cried. “All that great space 
is laid out in small garden plots, the right 
size for boys and girls to tend. Come with 
me and I will show you that what I am tell¬ 
ing you is true.” 

So all the others ran with Edwin, Biddy, 
Benedict, Silvia, and the rest, not stopping 
until they came to the great stone pillars be¬ 
side the road that marked the boundaries of 
the royal land. Then even Edwin was sur- 

58 


THE TORCH OF COURAGE 59 


prised, for old Sebastian, the bead gardener 
of the king, stood ready to greet them, and 
he led the way into the place of the new 
garden plots. There they were, neat, freshly 
dug, and each one marked with the name of 
some village child. 

“Yes,” Sebastian said, in reply to their 
eager questions, “go in and begin working 
your gardens. The king gives them to you, 
and he promises an exhibit of your flowers 
and vegetables in the hall of the palace, with, 
no doubt, prizes for the best. Here is your 
seed,” and Sebastian gave each boy and girl 
a small packet. 

It was exciting! There beside each plot of 
ground were the tools for working it, new 
and shining spades, rakes and hoes. Edwin 
tore open his packet of seeds. Then he 
looked at the other boys and girls in surprise 
as they opened theirs. No wonder they all 
looked astonished. The seeds were all ex¬ 
actly alike, small, black, and dusty as if they 
had laid in some granary for years. 

“We must speak to old Sebastian about 
this,” Benedict, whose father was the village 




60 THE TORCH OP COURAGE 


beadle, said. “It looks to me as if we were 
being tricked, and would have all our sum¬ 
mer’s work for nothing. Perhaps his eyes 
are failing him, and he did not know the kind 
of seed that he is giving us.” 

‘ ‘ Benedict is right, ’ ’ Sylvia added. ‘ ‘ Some 
of us, at least, should have better seeds than 
the others. Only look how small and dark 
my seeds are, and think, my mother is a lady 
in waiting to the queen!” As Sylvia spoke, 
her pink cheeks grew darker with her hurt 
pride, and she shook her long, brown braids. 

The other boys and girls took sides with 
these two, and they would all have besieged 
the old gardener if Edwin had not begged 
them to wait. 

“It is said that Sebastian can make a cab¬ 
bage root bear roses, so skilfully does he 
tend it,” Edwin told them, “so how do we 
know but that these are the seeds of some 
rare plants the like of which we have never 
seen ? It will do no harm to plant them, and 
keep them free of weeds. Why trouble Se¬ 
bastian until we see whether or not they 
come up ? ” It sounded like good advice, and 




THE TORCH OF COURAGE 61 


the children trusted Edwin usually, for his 
father was the head of the yeomen. So they 
planted the strange seeds in the stranger 
garden plots. 

Benedict sowed his plot hastily and an¬ 
grily, not stopping to cover the seeds 
properly, and then he betook himself off in 
high spirits. “I have done my duty,” he 
said; “now let the seeds take care of them¬ 
selves. I will bother with them no further.” 

Sylvia felt the same about her planting. 
She scattered the seeds carelessly, and then 
she whispered to Biddy. 

“Do you look to the watering and weeding 
of this plot of mine,” she said; “it will be 
little extra care for you, lying as it does right 
beside yours. If you do this, I will see that 
you have a new ribbon for your hair.” 

The other children planted, some care¬ 
fully, and some as Sylvia and Benedict had, 
for old Sebastian had gone back to the 
palace garden, and they could see him only 
in the distance, a bent figure in his blue 
smock, bending over his pruning and trans¬ 
planting. 




62 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


The spring days were wonderful for play¬ 
ing and roaming the hills. The village boys 
and girls went to the brook to make flutes for 
themselves from the new branches of the 
willows, and then there were Maying parties 
on the green, and trips to see the young 
lambs in the pastures. It was quite a long 
road up the hill to the palace ground and 
their gardens, so some of the gardens were 
rather neglected. At least, they would have 
been, if it had not been for Edwin and Biddy 
and a few other boys and girls. 

These worked faithfully among the gar¬ 
dens, discovering that the seeds came up 
much as other seeds would have, first the 
small seed leaves, then the larger ones, and 
then the buds. 

“Perhaps we made a mistake about our 
seeds, ” Edwin said to Biddy one day as he 
found her kneeling beside Sylvia’s plot, 
industriously weeding. ‘ 4 Here we have good 
pot herbs, and garden flowers, and melons 
just as we would have planted them in our 
gardens at home.” 

“There is old Sebastian; we can ask 




THE TORCH OP COURAGE 63 


him about it,” Biddy said, but Edwin did 
not hear her, so intent was he on the strange 
antics of the melon vine. “I wish that 
Gawain were here to tend his melons him¬ 
self,” he said; “there goes the vine toward 
the gate for all the world as if it was be¬ 
witched, and the melons are going to be too 
small and green to be eaten.” 

Biddy looked up to speak to Sebastian. 
Then she rubbed her eyes to see if she were 
dreaming. She had been perfectly sure that 
she had seen him, blue gardening smock and 
all, but there was only a blue-bird, perched 
on an apple bough at the end of the field. 
Biddy would have thought that was a dream, 
but some of the other children had the same 
odd experiences. 

“Here comes the gardener,” little blind 
Ursula exclaimed, pointing to the path that 
twisted in and out among the gardens, “I 
know his footsteps.” But no one was in 
sight, and the only sound was the rustling of 
leaves blown along the path. 

Even Edwin thought that he saw Sebas¬ 
tian. He came running back at last to 




64 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


Biddy. “Well, I tied Gawain’s vine so that 
it can’t run any farther,” he exclaimed. “I 
must tell old Sebastian how I caught it. 
There he is.” But Edwin, also, rubbed his 
eyes, for there was nothing in sight but a 
cloud of white blossoms on an almond tree, 
as soft and as white as Sebastian’s hair. 

The days fairly flew. Before the villagers 
realized it, the summer was on them, and one 
morning when the children went as usual to 
their gardens, the place was once more as 
bare as it had been before. Someone had 
come in the night and picked everything. 
Not even the stakes that had marked the 
plots were left. 

Then came the second surprise. A notice 
was posted saying that all the children were 
invited to the palace where there was to be 
a garden showing that afternoon. It was, 
they were sure, the exhibit of their own work 
and there was a great deal of excitement 
about going. 

All the village went, and the best places in 
the palace hall were reserved for the boys 
and girls. They looked, themselves, like a 




THE TORCH OP COURAGE 65 


garden, in their bright ribbons and girdles, 
their flowered skirts and colored jackets. 
But they could not compare with the glories 
of the fruits and flowers that filled long 
tables in the centre of the room. They could 
scarcely believe that these were their own 
flowers and fruits, raised from their seeds. 
And they could be quite sure now about the 
seeds, for there was a packet of the same, 
black, dusty ones lying among the flowers. 

“I wish I could see it all,” Ursula, sitting 
between Edwin and Biddy, said; “how 
sweet the room smells! I think that I smell 
the perfume of roses.” 

“You do, Ursula,” Biddy said, “the larg¬ 
est, and the most beautiful pink roses, so 
they are saying, that ever were raised in 
these parts before. Wait here a moment, 
and I will see from whose garden they 
came.” Biddy slipped through the crowd 
and looked at the label on the prize roses. 
Then she came back, her eyes bright with 
excitement. “Oh, Ursula, a wonder!” she 
said. “The roses are yours, raised and 






66 THE TORCH OP COURAGE 


tended by your loving hands, although you 
could not see them.” 

“I wonder who raised that big bunch of 
nettles,” Edwin said. 4 ‘I’ll go and see.” 

He came back laughing. 4 4 Those nettles 
are marked with Benedict’s name,” he said, 
4 4 and Sylvia is exhibiting some ugly tiger 
lilies that came up, so Sebastian said, in 
their gardens of anger.” 

44 Is old Sebastian here?” Ursula asked. 
44 Is that his great voice that I hear?” 

4 4 Yes, he is holding up some of the prize 
winning flowers,” Edwin said. Then he 
spoke again in wonder. 4 4 It looks like Se¬ 
bastian, but his blue gardening smock is 
made of velvet, and is as long as the cloak 
of a king. His white hair is crowned with 
white diamonds. It is the king! ’ ’ 

44 What flowers is he holding?” Biddy 
asked. 44 I can not see over the heads of the 
crowd.” 

44 Ursula’s roses, and a bunch of forget- 
me-nots as blue as turquoises,” Edwin said, 
4 4 and he is saying that the blue flowers came 
up in your garden as you spent your time 




THE TOECH OF COUBAGE 67 


tending the other neglected ones. He is 
awarding a prize to my potatoes, too. He 
says that they are fit for the royal kitchen.” 

“Think of it, and all from one kind of 
seed!” Biddy exclaimed. 

“The prizes are positions and holdings at 
the court,” the court chancellor now called 
out. “The seeds were the same for all, but 
the prize winners planted the very roots of 
the kingdom in their plots of ground.” 



HOW THE WATCHES CHANGED 
FACES 


All the boys and girls in Green Valley 
were very sure that the queer old clock 
maker had not had his shop on the Main 
Street the day before, but there it was. And 
such a strange shop at that! 

The old clock maker himself was odd 
enough, a bent, merry little figure whose 
eyes twinkled like a clown’s, and who wore 
the colored coat and pantaloons of a harle¬ 
quin. He stood at the door of his shop beck¬ 
oning for the children to come in, and point¬ 
ing to the most unusual sign ever displayed 
in Green Valley which he had hung on a 
swinging arm topped by a grinning clock 
face. 

“Come In and Help Yourself,” was what 
the sign said. It was Saturday, so the boys 
and girls flocked into the shop. 

It was the cheeriest, noisiest, merriest 
68 


THE TORCH OF COURAGE 69 


place that they had ever known. The cuckoo 
clocks were trying to outdo each other in 
singing, and the striking clocks played tunes 
like the chimes in the church tower, and all 
the big, and middle sized, and little clocks 
and watches were doing their best to tick 
louder and faster than the ones on either 
side. But what delighted the boys and girls 
most were the watches displayed in a special 
case by themselves in boxes that were lined 
with red and blue velvet. There were good 
sized ones in hunting cases for boys, and 
smaller wrist watches for the girls. And 
there was the alluring sign again, 6 6 Help 
Yourself.” 

The clock man had come inside with the 
children, and there he stood, still smiling 
and opening the case to show his wares. So 
they chose the watches, and two or three 
small clocks, one like a little shepherdess, 
and one a cuckoo clock, thanked the clock 
man, and went out with their treasures. He 
watched them from the window, rubbing his 
hands in pleasure, and smiling even more 




70 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


broadly than before. The whole thing was 
a wonder. 

When she reached home, Griselda did not 
stop in the kitchen where her mother was 
busy with the Saturday baking of the pies 
and cakes, but went up to her own room. 
How pretty her wrist watch looked as she 
laid it on the dressing table, the blue stones 
in the case as blue as the sky, and the links 
in the bracelet which held it shining with 
gold! Griselda pretended that she did not 
hear her mother calling her. She unbraided 
her long, yellow hair, and did it up in curls 
on top of her head. Then she slipped off her 
brown smock and put on her Sunday silk 
dress and a sash, and after that she put on 
red shoes and her hat with the wreath of 
flowers. Last, Griselda fastened her new 
wrist watch about her wrist, and went softly 
down the front stairs, and out into the gar¬ 
den. She leaned over the garden gate, and 
swung her arm so that whoever went by 
might see her watch, and she did not go in 
until supper time. 

She hurried upstairs to change her dress, 




THE TORCH OF COURAGE 71 


and as she took off her watch and laid it 
down, Griselda gave a cry of fright at sight 
of it. Oh, a strange thing had happened to 
it! She put it in haste into a drawer, for she 
could not bear to look at it. 

Basil had a fine chain and fob to go with 
the watch that he had chosen from the clock 
man’s shop. The watch was so large that it 
could be heard steadily ticking through his 
coat pocket, and he walked slowly on his way 
to get the meat and vegetables from the 
market for supper, listening to his watch. 
At last he sat down on a stone at the edge of 
the road, and polished the chain with his 
handkerchief, and changed the watch to an¬ 
other pocket. When he did remember that it 
was time for the supper pot to be boiling, 
.and went on to the market place, he discov¬ 
ered that the other boys had been there first 
and the meats were about all sold and the pot 
herbs sadly wilted and picked over. 

4 ‘Well, what does it matter?” Basil said 
to himself on the way home. “The family 
will be so pleased to see my new watch that 
they will not want to eat.” Just then the 





72 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


lamp lighter with his ladder and torch came 
along, and Basil pulled out his watch to look 
at it in the light of the street lamp. He 
gaped at it in astonishment, and almost 
dropped it. Then he stuffed it deep down 
in his pocket, the chain and fob with it, 
quite out of sight. It was a very odd looking 
watch, and it frightened Basil to look at it. 

It was the same way with some of the 
other of these gifts from the clock shop. 
There was Peter’s cuckoo clock. He took it 
home and set it on his untidy desk in his un¬ 
tidy room. The ink had spilled and he had 
not cleaned it up properly. His muddy 
boots stood in the middle of the floor, and the 
open door of his clothespress showed more 
unblackened boots all tumbling over each 
other. Peter’s hands left marks on the clock 
as he set it down and then watched it. 

“In five minutes it will strike; then the 
cuckoo will come out,” he said to himself as 
he waited impatiently. One, two, three min¬ 
utes, and then five passed. There was quite 
a small commotion inside the cuckoo clock, 
the little door in the front opened, but the 




THE TORCH OE COURAGE 73 


bird did not appear. What happened was 
so unusual and so terrifying that Peter put 
the clock in the clothespress and closed the 
door. He did not want to see it again, at 
least not for a while. 

In spite of these odd happenings, though, 
the old clockmaker in his gay clothes stood 
every morning at his door and smiled at the 
children on their way to school. Many of 
them stopped to show him how brightly they 
had polished their watches, and what good 
time they were keeping. He had changed 
the sign over his door. Now it read: 

“Clocks and Watches Fixed Free.” 

So it happened that on another Saturday 
quite a number of boys and girls brought 
their time pieces to his shop in order to take 
advantage of this kind offer. Among these 
were Griselda, and Basil, and Peter, and 
also Jeannette, whose clock was the little 
shepherdess holding the clock face in the 
folds of her china dress. All the children 
crowded around the table where the clock 
man sat with the tools of his trade and many 
coils of wire around him. But they noticed 




74 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


that his tools, at least those that he used the 
most, were odd indeed. 

i 1 Now here is a watch that is running too 
slowly / 9 he said to a boy who was at the foot 
of his class in school. “ Just wind it once in 
a while with this,” and the clock man gave 
the boy a tiny key made in the shape of a 
quill pen. 

“And here is one that is running too 
fast,” the clock man said to a boy who was 
often seen at the market place when he 
should have been home. 4 4 Oil it once a week 
with this,” and he gave the owner a small 
vial marked Hearth Fire Essence. 

Then the clock man looked at two watches 
that lay in front of him, put there by the 
two owners who had mingled with the crowd. 
He held them up to the light, and then he 
laughed until it seemed as if he would stop 
all the clocks with his merriment, but they 
seemed to enjoy the joke as much as he, 
ticking and striking and chiming in chorus. 
When he was able to stop chuckling, the 
clock man held up a little wrist watch set 
with blue stones, and said: 




THE TORCH OP COURAGE 75 


“ Where is the girl who likes to dress up 
like a parrot on a week day ? Come, I must 
know before I can fix her watch.” 

Amid the good-natured laughter of the 
others, Griselda came up to the table, and 
the clock man held up her watch. It had the 
face of a parrot instead of its own figures 
and hands. 

“Now, my boy, who is as slow as a tor¬ 
toise, if you please,” the clock man de¬ 
manded, and up came Basil. In the clock 
man’s hand was Basil’s watch, and it had 
the face of a turtle. Even the fob had 
changed its shape to the slow moving feet of 
the tortoise. 

“Now, the boy who likes to live like a 
chimney sweep, and the girl who knots her 
knitting. Come, it is all a joke, if we can 
laugh away our faults and do better,” the 
clock man said. So up came Peter with his 
cuckoo clock. Just then the hour struck, 
and out of the door came a little black imp, 
instead of the cuckoo; it looked exactly like 
a chimney sweep. Last of all, Jeannette 
came, for her little china shepherdess held a 




76 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


knotted ball of wool instead of the face of 
the clock. 

“ There is nothing so much out of order 
that it can not be mended,” said the clock 
man, “and I would advise the boys and girls 
whose time pieces are in order not to laugh 
too much, for these are very common changes 
in my watches and clocks, and may occur in 
yours any day.” 

With that, he waved the watches and 
clocks that had changed their faces three 
times in the air, blew into the works, whis¬ 
pered some magical words into the main¬ 
springs and, presto, they were all right 
again. The best part about it was that they 
stayed all right. 

Not long after that, when all the time 
pieces of Green Valley were going nicely, 
and the boys and girls making good use of 
their time, the odd clock man disappeared. 
There was not a sign of his shop anywhere, 
or a tick of it to be heard. If it had not been 
for the proof of him ticking away in their 
own pockets and on their home mantel 
pieces, the children would have thought that 



THE TORCH OF COURAGE 77 


lie had never been there on the Main Street 
at all. 

Where is Green Valley, did you ask*? 
Well, you may not be able to find it on the 
maps, because they set down the far-away 
places in the largest letters. Green Valley 
is so near you as to be almost home. 




IN THE FOREST KINGDOM 


The Princess Butterfly and her brother, 
the Prince Royal, sat by the fountain in the 
beautiful grounds of the palace looking very 
discontented. 

“Our birthday, and only five flavors of 
ice cream, and ten different kinds of cake, 
and two dozen visiting royalties, and five 
pounds of chocolate drops apiece!’’ the 
prince sighed. 

“And I received only ten new dresses of 
velvet, silk, and satin, not one of them differ¬ 
ent in color from my other frocks!” the 
Princess said, wiping a tear from her pretty 
blue eyes. 

“I had expected a sea plane as well as an 
aeroplane,” the Prince complained, “and a 
motor cycle as well as a bicycle. I don’t like 
the pattern of the planes, and why should I 
be asked to pedal a bicycle when I could rido 
without any effort on a motor cycle ?” 

78 


THE TORCH OF COURAGE 79 


“They don’t seem to understand that we 
are growing up, Royal,” the Princess ex¬ 
claimed, “and so must have ever so much 
more done for us. We are now twelve years 
old, and how can we rule the kingdom in the 
place of our father if we are given so little 
attention. The Court seems to be growing 
selfish and forgetting the needs of royalty.” 

“It would seem so, Butterfly,” the Prince 
replied. “I should like to go away from here 
for a great adventure, and capture all the 
riches and honor that are our due. We are 
royal twins, and the world belongs to us.” 

“And I would go with you, my brother,” 
the Princess said, looking at Royal with 
much pride. ‘ 6 1 would demand all the lovely 
and rare things that belong to me because I 
am a princess, and then I would come back 
in my glory to help rule our kingdom.” 

The two felt so excited over the thought 
which had come to them that they dropped 
the golden ball with which they had been 
playing and ran to the gate of the garden 
that looked out on the wide forest beyond the 
palace boundaries. It was a strange forest. 




80 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


At times they could see through the green 
lanes that the trees made along paths which 
looked entrancing to follow. At other times 
the trees seemed to stand close together like 
a company of soldiers in dark brown and 
green uniforms, their ranks so solid that no 
one would be able to pass through them. 

“You must never go into the Kingdom of 
the Forest,’’ the Court Jester who played 
with the Prince and Princess had warned 
them. When they asked him the reason why, 
he told them that once he had ventured in 
only a little way, and he had lost his gayest 
cap and his brightest string of bells. Other 
odd tales were told of the Forest Kingdom. 
The wise men said that once one entered, it 
was difficult to find the way back. The ladies 
of the court said that it was a dangerous 
place because the briers and bushes tore 
one’s ruffles and trains, and the walking was 
hard. The Court Cook said that there was 
not a single pastry or sweets shop along the 
forest road for miles. So Royal and Butter¬ 
fly had never felt the slightest desire to ex¬ 
plore it. 




THE TORCH OF COURAGE 81 


But now, as they heard the sweet note of 
a thrush coming to them from the top of a 
great tree and smelled the pungent odor of 
the pines, they clasped each other’s hands 
and looked in surprise to see how a new path 
seemed to lead from the palace gates. Then 
their surprise changed to wonder, for a 
strange, lovely lady stood there at the place 
where the path began, beckoning to the two. 

The Princess Butterfly thought, as she 
looked at this Forest Woman, that she had 
never seen so lovely a dress as she wore, 
even though it was a plain frock and not 
made of costly stuff. The beauty of it was 
the colors and the way that the Forest Wom¬ 
an wore it. There was a soft green skirt of 
woven grasses, and a bodice of moss, and the 
girdle was made of strands of wild flowers, 
and the sleeves were made of many leaves. 
Her eyes were as soft and brown as the eyes 
of a new born fawn, and she wore a wreath 
of white everlasting blossoms on her dark 
hair. 

The Prince Royal was most interested, as 
a boy would be, in the blue bird that flew 




82 THE TORCH OP COURAGE 


down from a branch and perched on the For¬ 
est Woman’s shoulder, and the wild deer 
that walked so fearlessly to her side. When 
she still held out her hand to the two chil¬ 
dren, they opened the gate and went outside. 
She smiled, and turned, and started through 
the forest, and they followed. 

“ These party clothes of ours are hardly 
fit for an adventure in the woods,” the Prin¬ 
cess said, as she saw how easily the Forest 
Woman swung along in her skirt of grass. 
“How odd we look, you in a crimson velvet 
doublet slashed with lace, and I in my long 
gown of gold colored brocade!” 

As the Princess spoke, the Forest Woman 
turned and pointed to a clump of trees that 
they had just reached, motioning for the two 
to stop. So they sat down on a bank, and 
looked wdth wonder at what they saw. 

There was a little loom set up under the 
trees, and in front of it sat a small weaver 
spinning gossamer threads and then weav¬ 
ing them together in a beautiful pattern on 
the loom. The weaver was dressed for her 
work in everyday gray, and her long arms 




THE TORCH OF COURAGE 83 


and slender fingers never stopped a moment 
for rest. The pattern that she wove was as 
delicate as lace and as sheer as a cobweb. It 
caught the colors of the sunshine that sifted 
its gold down between the branches, and here 
and there the weaving was jeweled with crys¬ 
tal drops of dew. It was almost finished and 
fit to be the veil of a queen, when a sudden 
gust of wind blew through the forest, and 
tore the delicate fabric from the loom, toss¬ 
ing it and tearing it until there was nothing 
left of the wonderful weaving. 

“Oh, dear!” exclaimed the Princess But¬ 
terfly, “what a pity!” 

But the small gray weaver waited until the 
wind had died down, and then began her 
spinning and weaving all over again, making 
a piece of fabric that was even more perfect 
and rare in design than the first one had 
been. 

“I should like to try and weave a dress for 
myself,” the Princess said, and as she spoke 
the Forest Woman led Butterfly up to the 
loom and motioned for her to seat herself 
in the place of the weaver. What a task it 




84 THE TORCH OP COURAGE 


was! The Princess had never done anything 
useful with her hands in her life before, and 
the thread tangled and broke, and she had 
the greatest difficulty in setting up even a 
very simple pattern on the loom. But she 
persisted, for whenever she felt discouraged 
she could see in fancy the flying arms and 
hands of the other little gray weaver. And 
after a while the Princess Butterfly had a 
very happy surprise. 

She discovered that she had made herself 
a frock that was as becoming and comfort¬ 
able as the one that the Forest Woman wore, 
and in addition it delighted the Princess 
more than any one that the Court Ladies had 
ever given her. It was loose and wide enough 
to run in along the woodsy path and gather 
berries. It was as soft as moss, with a bor¬ 
der of blue forget-me-nots at the edge, and a 
trailing little vine for a sash. How she had 
been able to make it the Princess could not 
tell, but it was a most pleasing frock. She 
slipped it on, and then she industriously 
wove a brown doublet and cloak for Royal 
the color and texture of oak leaves in the 




THE TORCH OF COURAGE 85 


fall, which everyone knows to be the color 
of strength. 

“Now we must go on, Butterfly,” the 
Prince urged. The Forest Woman was glid¬ 
ing along the path ahead of them, for all the 
world like one of the dryads who are said 
to inhabit the trees, and the children had a 
great desire to follow her. They, too, hur¬ 
ried on, and they traveled a long distance 
until they discovered a second wonder. At 
a turn among the trees they came to a clear¬ 
ing, and found themselves in a busy com¬ 
munity of little red dwarfs. 

The children themselves, though, seemed 
to have shrunk to the size of these small citi¬ 
zens of the Forest Kingdom. They discov¬ 
ered also that they too were suddenly busy, 
for everyone in the community of the red 
dwarfs was working, and whoever entered it 
must work too. Soldiers in red uniforms 
were drilling, ready to guard the workers 
who were cutting down grain and storing it 
in barns, the masons who were building pal¬ 
aces of sand like small stone castles to which 
the others came home at night to rest, and 




86 THE TORCH OP COURAGE 


the mothers who took care of the little ones. 
Prince Royal was given the work of building 
a new road to one of the palaces of sand, and 
when he had finished it, he sat on its edge 
and watched a flock of the red people who 
were aeronauts start along it, and then rise 
into the blue air on their own wings for their 
first flight. It was as exciting as if Royal 
had made the flight himself. Had he not 
built the road for its start, which had been 
really a very gallant thing to do ? 

“I don’t want to go on; there is so much 
more here that I should like to do,” the 
Prince said to Butterfly, when she came to 
him after sorting seeds for the little red 
people in one of their granaries. 

“ Perhaps we can come here again some 
time, Royal,” she said, “but, see, there is the 
Forest Woman calling us.” That was quite 
true. They were again their natural, boy 
and girl size, and the slender white hand of 
the Forest Woman, like the waving branch 
of a white birch tree, beckoned to them to 
follow her again. 

They ran, with the breezes for good play 




THE TORCH OE COURAGE 87 


fellows, and the birds making music all the 
way. They began to feel hungrier and hap¬ 
pier than they ever had before, and they 
wondered where the Forest Woman, always 
ahead of them, was going to lead them, when 
she stopped at the door of her house. They 
could be quite sure that it was her house, be¬ 
cause it looked like her. It was thatched 
with bark, and it had a door that was wide 
enough so that a whole company of the For¬ 
est Dwellers, the deer, the foxes, the wild 
hares, and the others that often needed shel¬ 
ter could enter walking abreast. 

And there were the Forest Dwellers inside 
now, as if they had expected the Forest 
Woman home, and had gathered to greet her 
and the guests she brought. They made an 
odd company indeed, the wild birds that 
perched on the mossy stools, the little owl 
who sat on the lichen mantelpiece, and the 
squirrels that chattered among the eaves. 
The Prince and Princess were of a mind to 
run in among them and laugh and shout, 
frightening them away perhaps, but they 




88 THE TORCH OP COURAGE 


saw at last why they were there. They saw 
too, at the same time, what they must do. 

The eyes of the deer were wet, for she had 
lost her fawn, but Royal went out and found 
it where it huddled in the bushes, caught by 
thorns, and brought it in. And Butterfly 
went to the spring and brought fresh, cool 
water to wash the wound in the little fox’s 
leg that the hunter’s trap had cut. To¬ 
gether, the children gathered boughs and 
built a safe hutch for the hare at the foot of 
a great hollow tree just outside the Forest 
Woman’s house where he would be safe from 
arrows. When they had done all this mercy, 
they came in, and there was a feast spread 
for them that they could share with the wild 
ones, ripe berries and fruits that the birds 
loved, and vegetables the gnawing creatures 
enjoyed, and rich things made of golden 
grain that were good for the deer and the 
squirrel. 

“Why, this is a birthday party. We thank 
you so very much, dear Forest Woman,” the 
Princess Butterfly said, but as she spoke and 
touched the old tree stump that was their 




THE TORCH OF COURAGE 89 


table, it changed to the gate of the castle 
garden. She reached out her hand to touch 
the white fingers of the Forest Woman, and 
instead she held a white rose that climbed the 
garden wall. The Prince stood beside her, 
and he looked as puzzled as she. 

“There she goes,” he said, pointing to a 
green branch that blew along the forest path. 

“What a beautiful birthday it was,” the 
Princess said, “with a chance to weave my 
own dress. Why, it is gone!” she added, as 
she looked down at her golden frock. 

“And I built a road, even if I can’t see it,” 
the Prince said. 

“You will see it when we come to rule the 
kingdom,” Butterfly said. “We will make 
it just like the Forest Kingdom.” 

Which was just what they did, a place of 
as great industry as that of the spider, as 
good citizenship and work as that of the ants, 
and all the mercy for the helpless that the 
Forest Woman had helped them to find, al¬ 
though they never saw her again. 






STOUT-HEART AND THE DRAGON 


The entire countryside of the land of 
Pleasant Acres was in terror of the dragon. 

For more years than the oldest inhabitant 
could count their valley had been most pleas¬ 
ant, a place of many green pastures and 
orchards and wide, fertile fields. Then, sud¬ 
denly, there came to it the great fear of the 
dragon. As yet, the dreaded beast had not 
descended from the mountain on the edge of 
Pleasant Acres where he had his den, but 
there was hardly any one of the people who 
could not describe him. 

When night came, they could see his fiery 
breath rising like a pillar of flame from the 
peak of the mountain. In the daytime his 
form could he made out if one had clear 
enough vision, crooked, ugly, huge and dark, 
outlined against the gray mountain side. As 
the months passed, everyone said that the 
dragon was coming nearer; it was now only 

90 


THE TORCH OF COURAGE 91 


a question of days until lie should descend 
upon the peaceful valley. Something ought 
to he done about it. Someone who was suffi¬ 
ciently brave ought to go and destroy the 
loathsome beast, but who should it be ? 

“We are of course needed here to guard 
the country in case of war,” the soldiers 
said, which was of course a good enough ex¬ 
cuse in its way. 

“I feel my rheumatism coming on,” the 
head man of the hunters said; “I have 
hunted these many seasons, and am hardly 
fit to climb the mountain.” 

“Who would settle the affairs of the land 
if I were to go out in search of the dragon?” 
the burgomaster said, “and I might not re¬ 
turn, and then what would become of our 
land?” 

It added greatly to the fear of the people 
to know that there was no one to save them 
from the dragon. Each day their terror 
grew, and they gave up their work and their 
business to gather in the market place and 
on the street corners to discuss the matter, 
and compare notes as to what was the best 




92 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


way to fasten their doors at night. There 
was a new sickness that seized some of the 
inhabitants of Pleasant Acres, particularly 
those who lived at the foot of the mountain. 
The doctors called it dragon fever, and it 
was as uncomfortable as the chills and fever, 
and very much like it. No cure had been 
found for it, and with the neglect of the daily 
work of the land, it wrought havoc among 
the people. 

Stout-Heart was the son of the black¬ 
smith, and he had come by his name because 
he was not straight and well formed like 
other boys, but had a weakness from child¬ 
hood that he bore without complaining. His 
father was the best smith for leagues 
around; it was even rumored that he had 
magic power, for the horses that he shod 
seemed to be unusually swift and sure, and 
he could temper the steel to make a sword 
blade as well as he could beat out a plow¬ 
share. It had been Stout-Heart’s ambition 
to sometime take his father’s place at the 
forge, but he could not even lift a hammer 
because his back was so bent. He might 




THE TORCH OP COURAGE 93 


have spent his days in grieving, but this was 
not his way. There was no merrier lad in all 
the Valley than he. He went from farm to 
farm helping as much as he could with the 
planting and the harvesting, and when the 
rumors of the dragon were about, Stout- 
Heart listened to them, wondering, at the 
street corners. 

And as Stout-Heart listened, he had a sud¬ 
den wish to at least attempt to rid his coun¬ 
tryside of this beast who had turned it from 
a pleasant place to one of sorrow and dread. 

There was a slender, bright blade hanging 
in the smithy that Stout-Heart’s father had 
recently made in his spare moments for the 
sheer joy of the work. It was as thin as 
paper, and as strong as the mountain from 
which its iron came. Stout-Heart could lift 
it easily and swing it, in a way; he knew for 
he had tried when no one was about to see 
him. Now he decided to go out in search of 
the dragon with the shining sword in his 
hand, telling no one, lest they should laugh 
at him. He was a lad of fourteen, if he was 
crooked and short for his age. 




94 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


“If I fail, it will be slight matter,” he 
argued to himself, “for I am of very little 
use to my people as it is. And, if by a rare 
chance, I should be given the strength to 
strike the dragon his death blow, I will have 
done a service to my land.” 

So Stout-Heart took the sword and started 
out toward the dark mountain where the 
dragon had his haunt. 

He had not gone very far when he came 
to an orchard that was like a vision of plenty, 
so rich was it with fruit. The trees bent to 
the ground with their load of rosy apples, 
golden pears, amber and purple plums and 
yellow peaches. There was enough fruit 
there to fill the market place, but Stout- 
Heart noticed that some of it was rotting in 
the warm autumn sun, for the man who 
owned it was sitting, shivering and shaking, 
on his doorstep. 

“What is the matter; can I be of any help 
to you?” Stout-Heart asked him , 

The man shook his head. “ There is no use 
of harvesting this year,” he said, “before I 
can get the fruit in, the dragon will have de- 




THE TORCH OP COURAGE 95 


scended from the mountain and scorched my 
orchard with his burning breath. They say 
that he is even now on his way to our 
valley.’ ’ 

16 Then make all haste to gather your har¬ 
vest before he comes so that you will be 
ready to meet him, and the fruit will be 
saved,” Stout-Heart urged. “See how 
quickly you can pick it, for it is all dead ripe 
in the sun,” and he gathered his arms full of 
apples to prove his words. 

“Perhaps you are right, my lad,” the man 
said, coming out to the trees, and starting to 
fill his baskets. At first he could scarcely 
pick the fruit, because his hands trembled 
so, but as Stout-Heart looked back on his 
way down the road, he saw that the orchard 
man was working busily, and not shaking, 
or looking in dread toward the mountain 
once. 

Stout-Heart’s way led through the farm¬ 
ing country, and it was not long until he 
came to a plough boy of about his own age, 
who was looking in a discouraged way at a 
field where the wheat had just been cut. 






96 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


“Are you making ready to plough for the 
winter wheat?” Stout-Heart asked the lad. 

“There will never be another crop of 
wheat in this field,” the plough boy said; “it 
is to be fallow, for we expect the dragon to 
come any day now and tear it up so deep 
with his mighty claws that no plough can 
ever make furrows in it again.” 

“Why not plough it, though,” Stout- 
Heart suggested, “and then you might have 
time to get the neighbors together and help 
in lighting a row of fires on the edge of the 
wood that would frighten the dragon back to 
his den. Wheat means bread, and there is 
always need of that.” 

“You are a brave lad, are you not?” the 
plough boy said, “carrying a sword as if you 
were a soldier of the guard. I doubt not 
but that if you were in my place you would 
be busy at the ploughing in spite of your 
crooked back,” and with that, the boy picked 
up the handles of the plough, and went cour¬ 
ageously on with his work. 

As he went on Stout-Heart met so many 
others who needed heartening. There was a 




THE TOECH OP COUEAGE 97 


pretty little goose girl who sat on a rock 
beside a stream, crying so hard that one 
could scarcely see how blue her eyes were. 
When Stout-Heart asked her what her 
trouble was, she told him between her sobs. 

“My flock of fine, white geese has strayed 
away, kind lad,” she said, “and my father 
will scold me roundly when I go home to¬ 
night for having been so careless. My mother 
will only look sad, because the geese are all 
we have in the world in the way of riches.” 

“But why not go and look for the flock?” 
Stout-Heart asked. 

At his words the little girl grew pale with 
terror. “You do not know what you are 
asking,” she said, breathlessly. “This stream 
is the one that flows down the mountain, and 
the dragon drinks from it. I dare not go 
any farther, for fear of the dragon.” 

“But come with me; I carry a sword,” 
Stout-Heart urged, and he took the little 
goose girl’s trembling hand, and led her 
along the bank of the stream until, right at 
a turning, they came upon the flock which 
had not strayed so far after all. The girl’s 




98 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


face was as bright as a rainbow after a 
shower and when Stout-Heart went on, he 
could hear her singing a little tune to the 
geese as she drove them merrily toward 
home. 

It was now late in the day, and growing 
dusk. Stout-Heart had come to the foot of 
the mountain and must begin the climb to the 
place of the dragon’s den. The old pines 
and oaks made trembling shadows along the 
path, and it was not long before Stout-Heart 
could hardly see a step ahead of him. There 
was a strange, roaring kind of sound also 
that was very like the voice of the dragon. 
For the first time in his life Stout-Heart 
was afraid. He stood still in the mountain 
path. 

“I can’t go on any farther; I can’t see,” 
he said to himself. 

But just then a strange thing happened. 
The bright sword that he carried so bravely 
was reflected in a slender line of light that 
lay ahead of him like a silver trail. Stout- 
Heart took courage, and walked on in the 
light up, and still farther up, the mountain. 




THE TORCH OF COURAGE 99 


Then, as lie turned into a clearing, lie saw 
all at once a cloud of bright red smoke and 
flame rising into the night sky above him. 
It was the dragon’s breath, he knew, and he 
stood still once more in his terror. But as 
he waited, he heard a sound of singing from 
the valley below. There had not been such a 
sound in a long time, and Stout-Heart knew 
that it came from the harvesters. The 
orchard man had called his friends to help 
him, and they were rejoicing now that the 
work was done. 

“I must have the same pluck that I asked 
of him,” Stout-Heart thought. So he went 
on up the mountain, until at last he came to 
the place of the dragon itself. He knew it as 
if it had been mapped for him, because he 
had heard it described so often. At any 
moment now the creature would appear. 
Stout-Heart took his bold stand at the en¬ 
trance of the cave, his sword raised, and 
waited. 

All at once he saw the dragon. There it 
stood, crooked, ugly, huge, and dark—a huge 
tree that a storm had shattered in such a way 




100 THE TOUCH OP COURAGE 


that it had a beast’s form as it stood with 
the rocks for a background. Stout-Heart 
saw also the dragon’s breath. It came from 
the iron factory on the other side of the 
mountain where they were working all night 
at the great furnaces which sent up their 
pillars of flame. 

Stout-Heart slept all night under the pro¬ 
tection of the dragon tree, and when it came 
morning he started home to tell everyone the 
good news. He met the people on the way, 
though. They had missed him, and had for¬ 
gotten their terror of the dragon in their 
desire to keep Stout-Heart safe in their 
midst. They greeted him as if he had 
brought the dragon with him, and they spoke 
of his having a high position among them 
when he came of age. Stout-Heart protested, 
saying that he had done no great thing, for 
there had been no dragon to kill, but the 
people thought differently. He had pre¬ 
served courage in Pleasant Acres, they 
said, and that was a great deed in itself. 




THE DWARF NAMED LUCK 


From the time when he was only a little 
fellow, Basil, the woodcutter’s boy, had 
heard wonderful tales of the strange, wise 
dwarf named Luck, who lived on the other 
side of the mountain. Almost anyone to 
whom Basil talked had something thrilling 
to tell him about Luck. 

“He has deep mines in which are found 
gold, diamonds, rubies as large as a wild 
bird’s egg, sapphires the color of the sky at 
night, and great green emeralds that make 
the grass in springtime look pale,” one of 
the pages from the castle of that land said 
to Basil. “I know, for my lord has all these 
treasures in his vaults. How else would he 
have obtained them, save from Luck?” 

“The dwarf named Luck has such store¬ 
houses and granaries as the world seldom 
sees,” the lad who drove the farmer’s truck 

* Copyright, The Owen Publishing Co. 

101 


102 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


to market told Basil as tie passed through 
the forest. “I know this, because my master 
says, when he looks at the great red apples 
in his orchard and at his fields of yellow 
grain, ‘Luck has been with me this harvest 
time!’ ” 

Even Basil’s friend, Jeanne, knew this 
queer little person named Luck. “I have a 
new silk dress, Basil,” Jeanne said as he met 
her one day in the village. “My mother 
happened to stop at the cottage of the old 
woman who has so many silk looms up there 
on the side of the mountain. It hardly seems 
as if she could spin all the many yards of 
beautiful silk fabrics that one sees there. A 
length of cloth as pink in color as a wild rose 
lay on her table, and my mother said to her, 
4 How I would love to make my Jeanne a 
dress to wear to a party of such silk as that! ’ 
And then what do you think happened?” 
Jeanne’s eyes were as bright as two stars as 
she told the story. 

4 4 1 cannot imagine, ’ ’ Basil said. 4 4 1 would 
like to have you tell me.” 

44 Then the old woman of the looms took up 




THE TORCH OF COURAGE 103 


the piece of rose-colored silk and put it in 
my mother’s hands,” Jeanne continued, 
“and she said, ‘Take it, and make the lassy 
happy with a new frock. If Luck is with me 
I shall have another length of the same silk 
by to-morrow at sunset.’ So you see,” 
Jeanne added, “that dwarf who lives across 
the mountain has lovely things for us.to wear 
as well as all his other riches. He must have 
pretty ribbons and rare old laces, and fine 
linens, and satins, and brocades. What an 
adventure it would be to go and find Luck, 
and get some of his wealth to bring home* 
He surely must have a great deal to spare.” 

This was exactly what Basil had been 
thinking for quite a long time, although he 
had never spoken it aloud. It seemed as if 
there were no possible chance of Luck ever 
coming to the cottage of the woodcutter, for 
the forest was getting bare of all except the 
new timber near there, and the young trees 
could not, of course, be cut. Basil’s mother 
was often ill, and there was little but dry 
crusts and the wild fruits of the forest in 
their cupboard. The woodcutter was grow- 




104 THE TORCH OP COURAGE 


ing bent and discouraged. He looked about 
him and saw the lord of the castle riding by 
in all his glory, the fat harvests of the farm¬ 
ers, and the fine clothes that were worn by 
the richer of the villagers, and he felt that 
things were going very badly with them. 

“I would like to send you to the school in 
the town to learn a trade,” he said to Basil, 
when the lad was thirteen years old, “but I 
have no money. Luck has not come near me 
the last years.” 

“Then I will go to the dwarf that they call 
Luck,” Basil said, throwing back his shoul¬ 
ders, and raising his head high. “I will make 
Luck give me all the needful things which 
he has and which we lack.” 

The woodcutter looked at his son in amaze¬ 
ment, and then he laughed loudly. “That is 
a bold desire of yours, my lad,” he said, “but 
a hopeless one. Have you not heard that a 
great many people of this countryside have 
had the same impulse, and have started out 
to try to cross the mountain beyond which 
Luck lives, and not a one of them has ever 
succeeded. Each and all have been obliged 




THE TOECH OP COUEAGE 105 


to turn back, except those who never re¬ 
turned at all. ’ ’ As he spoke these last words 
very earnestly, Basil’s father put his hand 
on the lad’s shoulder. ‘ 1 They do say,” he 
went on, “that, although he is of such very 
small stature, this dwarf is able to crush 
those who come too close to his kingdom. I 
was only joking when I spoke as I did of 
Luck.” * 

“But I have heard others speak of him,” 
Basil persisted. “I have heard them tell of 
the gifts they have received from Luck.” 

“Mayhap they just sat down and waited 
for Luck to come and find them,” the wood¬ 
cutter said in a kind of discouraged way. 

“I think that we have waited long enough 
for him, then,” Basil said. “Let me go in 
search of him, father. I have a very great 
desire to try to climb that mountain, if only 
to see what lies on the other side. I pray 
you let me go!” 

Basil made the same request of his father 
the next day, and again on the next. He was 
so anxious to take upon himself this great 
adventure, not so much for his own sake, as 




106 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


for the good of his father and mother, that 
at last the woodcutter gave a reluctant con¬ 
sent. 

“You may go, Basil,’’ he said one bright 
day in the fall, “but do you carry an ax, a 
knife, and a shovel with you. There is like 
to be need of tools in any adventure.” 

Basil’s mother gave the boy what bread 
there was left in the cupboard, and her bless¬ 
ing to sweeten it. Then he was off, with the 
hope that it was said Luck was apt to put in 
one’s heart for a ways along the road, 
whether or not it lasted. 

He had thought that he knew the trails of 
the forest very well, for he had followed 
them ever since he had been able to walk, but 
this mountain road was very different. It 
twisted and turned in the most confusing 
manner, growing each day narrower and 
more dense with undergrowth. Basil would 
be quite sure that he had made a mile or 
so of progress, and then he would come out 
at the selfsame tangled place where he had 
gone in. 

“I shall have to turn back,” he thought, 




THE TOECH OF COUEAGE 107 


and then he decided to try what he could do 
with his ax. 

It took all his strength to cut a way as he 
went. It almost seemed as if the vines and 
saplings joined themselves together as fast 
as he cut them, and then he would have to 
begin all over again. But Basil kept on, 
chopping and slashing and climbing a few 
steps up all the time, until the road was 
really more like a trail, and led, it seemed, 
higher and nearer to the top of the moun¬ 
tain. 

All this work took a long time, though, and 
the bread was soon exhausted, and Basil had 
to subsist on whatever the wild creatures of 
the wood did—berries and fruits and fish. 
He grew weak, and he was not able to so 
much as see the top yet. At last, when he 
was about halfway up the side of the moun¬ 
tain, he came upon a poor husbandman who 
was trying to gather in his small harvest of 
grain and grapes before the frosts should 
come and blight them. 

“ Am I coming near to the kingdom of the 




108 THE TORCH OP COURAGE 


dwarf whom they call Luck?” Basil asked 
of the man. 

The husbandman laughed as he pointed 
far off, up, and across the mountain peak. 
“If he is to be found at all, you will find him 
there, ’ ’ he replied , 6 t but it is a long j ourney . 9 9 

“Then could I ask you for a bite of 
bread?” Basil asked. 

“You could after you have worked for 
it,” the husbandman said. “I have only 
this sickle for harvesting, but you can try to 
cut my grapes if you like.” 

Basil thought of the knife that his father 
had given him. He took it out and went to 
work for the husbandman. It was no easy 
task, for the harvesting demanded skill and 
strength, and the man was a hard master, 
exacting and untiring. At the end of each 
day he gave Basil only a small portion of 
food, and when the harvest was all in at the 
end of the autumn and the nights were 
frosty, he sent him on the road again, with 
a few loaves to last him until he should come 
to some other shelter. 

It seemed to the lad that he would never 




THE TORCH OF COURAGE 109 


live to find, that next shelter, for the days 
grew increasingly cold, and there were 
storms of ice and snow as he went higher up 
on the mountainside. He forgot about the 
dwarf Luck, and only thought how he was 
going to be able to make his way to the end 
of his journey. One day in the winter he 
stumbled, half frozen, into a little deserted 
hut very near the peak. 

There were still some hot coals in the hut, 
and Basil made haste to cut some firewood 
and pile it inside so that he might keep him¬ 
self warm. There was also food on the 
shelves of the hut. Some monk may have 
left the shelter when he went on to succor 
someone at the foot of the mountain. Basil 
entered, and when he was warmed and fed, 
he went out with his shovel to try to break a 
path so that he might go on. 

This was almost as hard as it had been to 
cut his first trail, for there were heavy 
storms almost every day that filled the paths 
that he broke. When he tried to follow them, 
the ice would prove too much for him; he 
was not able to get a foothold, and would be 




110 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


obliged to go back to bis shelter again. But 
he kept on digging until there came a day 
that he had thought would never come. It 
was the first day of spring. 

It found Basil almost at the top of the 
mountain, so near that he could look at the 
tops of the trees that grew on the other side. 
He had packed up some food, and had been 
plunging along for a number of days now, 
but always with his eyes on his digging, so 
that he had not looked up to note his prog¬ 
ress. There, though, were the green tops of 
trees. The path along which he ran was sud¬ 
denly green and bright with wild flowers. 
It seemed as if a wonder had come to pass, 
and Basil ran to the top, and then a ways 
down the other side. 

He had not gone far when he discovered 
that he was in a very strange and beautiful 
country. All the houses looked like castles, 
and each was set in its own fair farm and 
orchard land. There were boys and girls in 
comfortable clothes playing happily, and all 
manner of workmen were busily plying their 
trades of mining for gold and silver and 




THE TORCH OP COURAGE 111 


jewels, making these into useful and lovely 
things, and building more castles. No one 
seemed anxious or worried about anything, 
but as he looked at this joyous place, Basil 
was about to turn back. He had come for 
such a long journey, and he felt that he did 
not look fitting to go down among the castles. 

But just as the lad was about to turn, a 
giant stepped into the path in front of him. 
At first Basil thought that he was only one 
of the old oak trees, because of his great size, 
his strength, and his dress of forest green 
and brown. 

“What would you have here in my king¬ 
dom f” the giant asked. 

“Nothing, sir,” Basil replied. “I have 
come a long, hard journey of work with no 
help but these tools, that I might find the 
dwarf called Luck. Do you happen to know 
where he lives ? 

The giant smiled down on Basil. “There 
is no dwarf named Luck,” he said. “Those 
who are brave enough to come to this side of 
the mountain find me, the Giant Pluck. I 




112 THE TORCH OF COURAGE 


have everything to give that Luck is sup¬ 
posed to offer.” 

It was a very happy surprise for Basil. 
He went home and brought back his mother 
and father to live with him in the Kingdom 
of Pluck. In time they forgot all the stories 
that they had heard about the dwarf, for 
they found everything that was needful for 
their wealth in Pluck’s land. 









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